


Luck Contrary

by Luraia



Category: Mary Poppins (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gun Violence, Hurt/Comfort, I don't know who else gets injured, In case all the vague tags don't give that away, Injury, Work In Progress, even Mary Poppins has her turtle days, impossible is possible, injured jack, injured michael
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-29
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-03-26 16:30:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19009537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luraia/pseuds/Luraia
Summary: Sweeps are lucky.  Leeries have the gift of second sight.  And the Fidelity Fiduciary Bank is much too grand and imposing for any robber to dare cross it.Two of those statements are possibly true.  One of them most definitely isn't.  And not all adventures are fun.  Some of them end in blood and tears and, all in all, a bit of second sight and luck would come in very handy.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Violence. Injury. Guns. I will try not to go too graphic or gory (if you were fine reading 'Luminary', you'll probably be fine with this) but there will be some not nice people doing not nice things to characters you are likely rather fond of. Children will be in danger. Adults will be in danger. (Jack is always in danger in my stories, in case you somehow missed that fact or are new to my stories, though this time he may have to share the whump). I don't currently intend to kill anyone (at the very least, not the 'good guys') but then if I promise that, there goes half the tension so...no promises? I mean, as a second warning, this is a work-in-progress and it's possible the story will demand I take the dark path. But hopefully the path will lead back into the light at the end. Hope is good.

There was a saying that leeries had the gift of second sight.

Jack didn’t know if that was true.  He certainly never saw the future, or ghosts, or any of the sorts of things people with second sight were supposed to be able to see.  Jack did see more than most people, but there was nothing supernatural in that.  He just looked.  Most people, particularly adults, stopped looking.  Sure they used their eyes to watch where they were going, and to scan their environment for changes or hazards…but the things they see every day, the flowers in the park, the clouds in the sky, the faces of the buildings…those things become background, and so they see them but they don’t _look_ at them.  And when something magical did happen right in front of them, their sensible brains immediately worked out how that couldn’t have happened, and so they didn’t see it even when they did.  Jack looked.  And he saw everything.

He still didn’t see auras or mystical signs or get premonitions, but perhaps he did get _something_ , a sort of compulsion that was almost impossible to define because it wasn’t something he saw, not even any sort of hunch or feeling.  It was just, more often than not, Jack would somehow find himself at exactly the right place at the right time.  Jack wouldn’t call himself magical, and he was just as likely as anyone else to miss a turning or miss the bus or forget his keys or lose a bit of money out of a hole in his pocket.  It’s just that when those things did happen, it quite often turned out to be for the best.

It was that sort of compulsion that had him in the park at the right time to hear Georgie calling for help as a kite dragged him up towards the sky.  It was the same sort of right place at the right time that had him in the exact spot three children, lost in a fog, happened to wander to.  Bert had had the same sort of compulsion as well, though he tended to call it ‘luck’ rather than any sort of sixth sense.  Sweeps are lucky.  Leeries have second sight.  Jack had a bit of both inside him (same as Bert) and maybe that was why, even for a leerie, Jack was particularly good at being exactly where he needed to be.

Then again, sometimes an accident is just an accident, a wrong turning is just a wrong turning, and a coincidence is just a coincidence, and bad things can still happen, even if one walks towards them with eyes wide open.

If Jack _had_ been able to see into the future, properly, he would likely have made some very different choices on that particular morning, choices that _didn’t_ end with him taking three children to the bank.  Whether it would turn out well he did, or a horrible tragedy, remained to be seen, but it definitely wasn’t what he would have chosen.

It was the summer, which meant the children were on holiday from school but their father was still working and their aunt Jane still worked with SPRUCE and their friend Jack looked just the slightest bit run down from having to wait until late to turn on the lamps but then get up quite early to turn them down again.  Summertime hours are not a leerie’s friend.

“It would almost pay to turn nocturnal,” Jack remarked, “And sleep in the day.  Only, how could a person miss out on this?”

That was during a picnic in the park one weekend, when Jack had made the unusual move of laying down for a nap after the food, instead of leaping up to play all the games the children were ready to play.  It was a lovely day, particularly for London; blue skies, a warm sun with just enough breeze to offset the heat, flowers in blossom, trees hushing gently in the wind, and all sorts of insects buzzing and humming about while birdsong filled the park.  The _this_ he didn’t want to miss might also have had something to do with Jane letting him use her lap as a pillow.  At any rate, the children couldn’t be too disappointed, because after a short nap Jack had leapt up, as energetic as ever, and they all got the most out of the sunshine.  That was a good day.

On this summer day, it was just a little bit too warm, despite the sky being a rather dull gray, though the sun did peek through from time.  It was the dull sort of day that made it harder to get out of bed, as though the sun hiding meant perhaps it wasn’t as late as the clock said it was and perhaps it was still time to sleep.  The entire Banks family slept in, in fact.

Not being a school day, this was not a problem for the children.  Only their father, being an attentive sort of parent, didn’t like to leave Ellen to seeing that his children were dressed and combed and fed, and the children, being an attentive sort of offspring, in turn rather enjoyed making sure their father was fed himself, and his clothes were matched up and put on the right way around (that only happened _once_ , to be fair) and that he had everything he was meant to have before he stepped out the door.

They were so attentive of each other this morning that they rather got in each other’s way.  Annabel carefully made sure to pass her father toast, which he buttered and added jam to…then promptly offered to Georgie.  John, in the meantime, made sure to lay out their father’s hat and briefcase and accidentally insured that when his father went looking for them in their usual places, they weren’t there and, as he’d just sent John to wash the jam from Georgie’s hair for him (it was _that_ sort of morning), there was no one to inform him that they were lain neatly on the chair and so he spent twice as long as he might have looking for them, along with Annabel, who was still chasing him about with toast (this time already buttered and smothered in jam) and so even when she saw the hat and briefcase she didn’t think to mention it.

Then when he finally had everything he needed, and the children were lined up by the door to say goodbye and looking more or less presentable (Georgie and John looked a bit damp, and now Annabel had managed to get jam on her sleeves), Annabel finally succeeded in getting him to take her toast.  It was a bit of a sticky mess, but Michael still smiled and offered sincere thanks and reminded his children to behave and mind Ellen and all the usual things a father says when he suspects it to be hopeless that his children will avoid mischief but hopes they at least won’t purposefully seek it out.

And then the house shook from a canon blast and he knew that meant he should have been out the door five minutes before and out he dashed.  He had his hat in one hand and Annabel’s toast in the other.  His briefcase was left on the floor where he set it to accept the toast.

“Father, your briefcase!” the children shouted, almost at once, but almost is not quite the same thing as at once, and Michael was feeling the late hour in his feet and he had no time to hear shouts after him.  And as he had opted to drive to work to make up for lost time, he was gone before anyone could catch him and with no hope of catching up to him either.

“I suppose we had best call the bank in a bit and let him know,” was Ellen’s decision on the matter.  “I don’t suppose there can be anything so very important it can’t wait until he has time to come back for it.”

This wasn’t at all the opinion of the children, who were quite certain the briefcase must contain something of utmost importance that their father would need at once.  They had wanted Ellen to take them to the bank.

“I’m too old to go traipsing all the way to the bank,” she answered, which was ridiculous because she might get a bit confused from time to time but her traipsing powers were as sharp as ever.  “And in this heat,” she added, “I’d catch my death of heat stroke,” just as though they lived in the Sahara Desert and not in London.  And, as a final stroke against leaving (and the children had all sorts of arguments lined up, from suggestions to take public transportation, to taking a taxi, to offering to fan her the entire way) she said, “And I’ve come down with a summer cold.”  And that was the end of the argument.

“Well…if Ellen can’t take us, perhaps we can take ourselves,” Annabel said.  “I think I remember the way.”

“You know we won’t be allowed,” Georgie said gloomily.  “It’s a hundred miles from here.”

“If Father really needs his briefcase…perhaps he wouldn’t mind so much if we called for a taxi?” John suggested.  But it was too early to call the bank to ask because their father wouldn’t have even arrived yet, and anyway, they all suspected they knew the answer would be ‘no’.

“Could we ring Aunt Jane?” Annabel suggested.  “Or…perhaps…Jack?”

“Does Jack have a telephone?” John asked doubtfully.  And as they talked, they moved to the window to look out, perhaps hoping to find inspiration out on the street.  If they were hoping to see Jack coming along to turn down their lamps, they were disappointed.  The lamps had already been turned down.

What they were not disappointed in was the sight of a familiar bicycle pedaling past at the exact moment they happened to look out.

“Jack!” cried three voices at once, though of course he didn’t hear them from all the way outside or stop, and they all ran to the door to run after him.

They had a bit of a run, because Jack clearly was intent on going somewhere, and that somewhere wasn’t to visit with them, but he did hear their shouts and stopped just at the entrance to the park and let them catch up.

“Hello children,” he said cheerfully.  “Out for a morning run in the park?”  Then, after eying Georgie’s damp hair, and John’s damp everything else, he added, “Or swim?”

“We are going to the bank,” Georgie answered.

“Oh…investing some money?  Or perhaps you need to make a withdrawal?”  And somehow Jack sounded perfectly serious and at the same time seemed to be laughing with his eyes.

“To see Father,” Annabel explained, though she thought Jack probably already understood that much and was just teasing them.

“He forgot his briefcase this morning,” John added.  “And we wanted to take it to him.  Only…we aren’t allowed to go alone.”  And now that Jack was actually standing in front of them, all three children at once wanted to beg that he take them…and at the same time suddenly thought perhaps it would be wrong or impolite to ask.  Jack had clearly been off to somewhere after all, and in quite a hurry as he hadn’t even paused passing their house as he usually did to wave towards them.

“You also seem to have forgotten the briefcase,” Jack pointed out, this time with a raised eyebrow.

“No, we wanted to catch you so we had to run,” Georgie answered.  And then, perhaps because he was young enough to not feel the wrongness in asking the same as the older ones, he said, “Can you take us to the bank?”

“Oh…” said Jack, and with that hesitation, three hearts sank, certain that he did have somewhere important to go and they were being horribly rude and imposing and his next words were sure to be ‘sorry, but…’.  Only when he did speak, it wasn’t quite that at all, though it started off sounding like he was about to make his excuses.  “I’d love to take you, and I suppose it is only a matter of balance only…” and then he got a determined look on his face and finished with, “If all else fails, we have our feet.  Sure, I’ll take you to the bank.  I’m sure Michael will appreciate having his briefcase back.”

“Are you sure?” Annabel asked, feeling suddenly a bit shy and awkward, never mind that this was Jack, who was practically like an uncle.

“Course I’m sure,” said Jack, all hesitance gone from his voice now.

“Only…” and this time it was John protesting, “It looked like you were going somewhere important.”

“I always go somewhere important,” said Jack.  “And this morning, that important place is the bank.  Let’s go get that briefcase.  And perhaps Ellen would like to know where you are going?”

So, much more slowly, all four of them made their way back to the house.

Ellen was not pleased with them running off to enlist Jack’s help.

“He’s not your personal taxi service,” she admonished, which made the older two children feel wronger than ever but just made Georgie look confused and Jack laughed out loud.  Ellen wasn’t finished, either.  “And who is going to help me with the dishes?  And I had wanted to send you out this morning to the shops.  Summer doesn’t mean no work, you know.”

“It should,” Georgie grumbled, too low for her to hear, which was unusual for him, not least because he actually liked going to the shops (or at least, the stop at the park that going shopping usually brought), and the older two enjoyed the grown up feeling that came with doing the shopping.  Usually, Ellen found a harder time sweeping them out the door to play than finding helping hands, but this morning everyone seemed to be a bit contrary.  Or perhaps Ellen herself had a bit of second sight and was trying, in her way, to avert what was to come.  If that were true, she failed.

“Father’s briefcase is important, I know it is,” said Annabel firmly.  “Perhaps…if you have a list we can stop on the way back home?”

“And leave me to the washing up, I suppose?” Ellen demanded.

“Surely we can all lend a hand before we go?” Jack suggested, and led the way to the kitchen where he immediately leapt into service.

“Here, if you’re going to help with the cleaning, you should have a chance to do some of the dirtying first,” Ellen interrupted him, offering him the remains of the breakfast, which Jack tried to refuse and somehow still found himself sitting down to a plate of food, before she set about to get him some fresh tea while the children followed Jack’s example and set to work themselves.  All in all, Ellen only managed to delay them some ten minutes, and then another five while she tried to remember the list of items she wanted them to fetch, and then a few minutes more when she had to unearth the bit of money Michael had given her for the shopping.  As always with Michael, who sometimes seemed to only loosely understand the realities of mundane but necessary household chores, the amount left would either be far too little…or far too much.  Luckily, ever since he’d been given a raise at the bank, the latter was more likely, and there was enough that the children whispered together about getting ice-creams after.

In the middle of all this, Jack managed to gently suggest changes of clothing to those who could benefit (John’s clothes would likely soon dry but would be uncomfortable until they did and Anabel’s sleeves had somehow become even more of a mess during the washing up) and managed to towel off Georgie’s head in the midst of drying dishes and, all in all, they actually looked somewhat presentable as they made their way towards the door, hats on heads and briefcase in hand.

It was at this moment that the phone rang.  It was Michael, as it turned out, having missed his briefcase and calling to inform his children that they were not to traipse across London alone to bring it to him, never mind that he did have some rather important papers inside it.  He knew his children rather well, it seemed.

So all in all, there were a million reasons why the children should have been nowhere near the bank when the event happened, and just one reason that they were.

“But Jack has agreed to take us!”

Michael was hesitant, not because he didn’t trust Jack but because he didn’t want his children to impose on the man’s good nature.  Then Jack himself said, “I’m happy to do it.  Could be a bit of an adventure.”

Though they didn’t know it, truer words had never been spoken.  And not the nice, fun kind of adventure either.  But Jack couldn’t see the future, and neither could anyone else in the house.  And so Michael finally said, “Well if you’re sure…it would help me out a lot…”  And Jack said, “Course,” and Ellen said “Don’t be away all day, _achoo_ ,” to which everyone (including Michael over the phone) said “Bless you!” and then they really _were_ on their way.  In fact, the children were so excited that they almost forgot the briefcase themselves, and Jack had to send them back in for it while he sort of looked at his bicycle as though it were a bit of a puzzle and then went to adjust the ladder into its familiar role as an extra seat.

“I’m sure it’ll work,” he mumbled to himself.  “I don’t need _her_ to make it work, either.  It’s all a matter of balance.  Annabel on one side, John on the other, and Georgie in the basket again.”

It was awkward arranging themselves without Mary Poppins, or perhaps just because there was only Jack to hold the bike up while they got on it, and for one rather long and somewhat embarrassing moment, they thought perhaps Jack wasn’t quite as wonderfully talented as they had supposed and maybe it couldn’t be done.  They were just getting ready to be terribly kind and polite over it, in fact, and suggest taking the bus or, if worst came to worst, walking, when Jack suddenly said, “Aha!” and tilted the entire bicycle to the side and told John to sit on the ladder and ‘hold on tight!’.  Then he grabbed the top rung of the ladder on the other side where it went up into the air and dropped his whole weight on it so the whole thing swung down, swinging John up and up, too far in fact, only this seemed to be on purpose so Annabel could climb onto her side.  Then with both sides occupied, it turned out to be remarkable easy for Jack to get it back to its usual position, not leaning one way or the other.

“Like I said, a matter of balance,” Jack said as he straddled his bicycle, steadying it with his knees so he could lift Georgie into the basket with the briefcase without any danger of his siblings taking a tumble.  “Knew I could do it.”

Setting off he was a bit wobbly, but then, the ride had always been a bit wobbly, even with Mary Poppins on board, and after a minute or so they all remembered how to sit and Jack remembered how to lean into turns with his wider and heavier load and they all enjoyed the ride.

They went through the park to start, in part because it was the quickest way to get on towards the bank and in part because Jack might not have been one hundred percent sure he’d really be able to manage without a certain magical nanny around to make the impossible possible…and if he discovered he really couldn’t safely carry everyone he wanted to make this discovery in a place full of soft grass and ponds, not over unforgiving concrete.  The park keeper shouted after them as they passed, somewhat incoherently.  This was not so much because they were going too fast to understand him as because he was quite certain they were doing something they weren’t supposed to do in the park, but couldn’t quite figure out what rule they were breaking, and what he ended up shouting was a bit of nonsense like, “No riding ladders joyrides silly impossible doings in the park!”

At any rate, Jack took no notice, and the park keeper didn’t chase after them and clearly seemed to feel better for having had a good shout, even if it was a muddled and confusing one, and so no harm was done to anyone and Jack remembered how to ride a bicycle laden down by extra people and it was almost as good as having Mary Poppins back for a bit.

It might have been better for all of them if he had discovered it really was impossible and decided they had to walk.  It might have been better if they had been forced to return home, bumped and bruised but safe.

But nothing impeded the bicycle and no calamity befell them on the way and Jack didn’t take any wrong turnings and get them lost and Georgie didn’t drop the briefcase and oblige them to stop and collect it and all in all absolutely nothing arose to stop or slow their passage to the bank.

Jack was a leerie, and more often than not he was at the right place at the right time.  That day, though, everything was contrary, and perhaps just that once, he was going to the wrong place at exactly the wrong time.  And he was taking three young children with him.

They arrived at the bank and went inside.

And five minutes later, so did the bank robbers.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Wrong choices seldom start with deciding to rob a bank.  Generally, they start quite small, and even look, from the outside, like good choices.  A boy decides to be friends with another boy, and surely friendship can never be a bad choice, and that new friend, who maybe started early in wrong choices, suggests they do something that the boy knows is wrong, but it sound like fun, and after all, he doesn’t want to disappoint his new friend.  Or a woman listens to the wrong speech at the wrong time suggesting that a little bit of violence to fight injustice can yield a world of good.  Or a man does his best to be honest and just live a good life but life itself seems against him and he has a starving family at home and there is no work to be had and hunger and hurt pride narrows his vision until the only choices he can see are between starvation or theft.

The worst of acts can be performed by good people who took too many wrong turnings in life until they are so back to front that they see the entire world through a distorted mirror and convince themselves that there is no choice to be made, that the bad act is a necessary evil, perhaps even that it is a good act in disguise.

Of course, the worst acts can also be performed by immoral, greedy, sociopaths with no care for the sanctity of life, who at best don’t care who they hurt as they reach for what isn’t theirs, and at worst actually enjoy their power to cause other’s pain.

 The media called them the Clean Sweeps Gang.  No one, least of all the media, was entirely sure where the name came from, whether they had named themselves and informed someone or if it were because they tended to clean out banks and then get clean away, or perhaps it had to do with their tendency to get into high secure vaults by posing as cleaners.  That last really shouldn’t have worked more than once, since people talked and banks should have been more on their guard.  Certainly banks should know the difference between their own cleaners and outsiders.  But somehow the gang continued to get in and out of banks across England, small banks for the most part, in out of the way places with perhaps less security than might be advised, but for small gains.  And they were getting bolder as they went.  They went in during the day, and where sneaking failed, they’d brandish weapons, make threats.  They really seemed almost funny, almost harmless, never mind that they were criminals, until the first time they made good on their threats.  People died.  And the gang escaped to rob again.

The Fidelity Fiduciary Bank was protected from would-be robbers in three ways.  Firstly, it was a well built, large building with a sure foundation, strong walls, and very few points of access, all known and guarded.  Second, it had state of the art securities in place, from having guards always on duty, to having electric burglar alarms at every door and window which, upon being forced, would not only ring an alarm but would also cause a message to be sent to the police alerting them to the potential break in.  The vaults themselves had their own distinct alarms as well, and upon being tripped would send a system of weights in motion to slam shut and bolt the doors to the room with the vault. 

Thirdly, the bank had its reputation.  There is a reason a person is more likely to be robbed in a dark alleyway rather than in a quiet, upscale neighborhood, and it has nothing to do with the number of potential witnesses or the alacrity of the police to a cry for help.  Everyone knows that dark alleyways in bad parts of town are where robbers lurk, including the robbers.  And everyone knows that bank robbers go after the smaller, less defended banks and not large and imposing institutions in the middle of London with an army of police at ready call.  A reputation is a bit like placing a locked door inside people’s minds, and the bank had a reputation for never being robbed.

That said, the most impregnable castle can be breached with a bit of cleverness, guards can be bribed or disposed of, clever electric alarms and devices can fail or otherwise be outmatched, and even quiet upscale neighborhoods have their unfriendly visitors from time to time.

Robbing small banks might not yield much money, unless one is very lucky (or very well informed) in choosing just the right bank at just the right time…but they are good for something else.  Like, perhaps, learning about how to rob banks before having to try the really big and important job.

The gang had plans, big plans.  Some of them even told themselves they were noble, commendable plans.  Their leader, for one, fancied himself as a sort of Robin Hood.  They had practiced and learned and observed until even their backup plans had backup plans.  They all knew where to go and who to threaten and who to avoid (and who, in fact, is assured to turn a blind eye as they go by).  They knew where they were going and what they were doing when they got there.  In and out, they thought, in under ten minutes, and then they knew where to meet up after, once they’d managed to shake whatever chase might arise.  It was a flawless, beautiful plan.  It should have worked.

And then, one would-be bank robber walked boldly across the entrance, walked calmly and innocently towards where he knew there to be a door, brushing past some children and a man, only for the man to look at him in great surprise.

“Jimmy?” said the man.

And that was probably about the time that everything began to go wrong.

Jimmy, upon being so identified, should have reacted in one of two ways.  The best reaction would have been strict denial.  _Sorry, I’m not Jimmy_ , is what he might have said, _I just have one of those faces, and I don’t know you from Adam_.  And then he should have hurried on his way and continued with the plan and hoped that he was believed.

The second, less preferable but at least not attention grabbing solution might have been to say a quick ‘ _how do you do, can’t talk now, we’ll catch up some time_ ’, leaving until after to figure out what he might have to do to ensure no one went to the police with information like ‘ _I saw this guy I know named Jim at the bank just as it was robbed_ ’.  What those necessary steps might have been, well, surely he wouldn’t have to go so far as murder.  A plea towards their shared background coupled with a thinly veiled threat would do.

What did happen was that the so-called Jimmy, upon unexpectedly being greeted, panicked.

“Jack!” he said in response to his own name, making it rather impossible to follow that up with ‘ _actually, I’m not Jimmy at all, I don’t know you_ ’.  Only, having panicked as he did, the man tried anyway.  “I’m not Jimmy.”

Then, having gotten a look of utter confusion in return (and thanks to his anxious and contrary words that look wasn’t only coming from Jack), he finished with a hurried, “Can’t talk now. Quite busy.”  And he hurriedly dashed through the door he’d meant to slip past unnoticed by the general public.  As it was, the general public, at least those in his vicinity, watched him go with puzzled frowns.

Jack, for of course it was the Jack who had brought the Banks children to the Bank, didn’t know what to make of it.  If he hadn’t had the children with him, he’d likely have gone after him.

“Did you know that man?” John asked, quite naturally.

“I thought I did,” answered Jack.  “One of Bert’s chums, was Jimmy.”

“He knew you,” Georgie pointed out.  “He knew your name.  So you must know him.”

“Strange to see him here,” commented Jack.  “I thought he left London.”

“Like Bert did to travel around the world?” asked Annabel, because they’d all heard stories about Bert even if he had been gone long enough that the elder two barely remembered him and Georgie didn’t really remember him at all.

“Before even,” Jack answered.  “Bert never said but I think…” but then he trailed off, perhaps not wanting to speculate over Jimmy’s possible troubles in front of the children.  Jack loved to tell stories and share antics, but he wasn’t one for gossip.  So instead of trying to explain to three children what sorts of troubles a man could get into in London that would drive him to leave, he finished with, “Well…I think he had some troubles and felt a change of scene would do him good.  I haven’t seen him in years.”

“Was he a leerie, like you?” John wanted to know.

“No, not him.  He was a sweep.”

Now, if they had been completely alone in their corner as they waited on Michael, their quiet conversation would have been just that, private.  And if Jimmy’s bumbled greeting hadn’t been so attention grabbing, likely no one nearby would have paid them any mind either, whatever their conversation.  But Jimmy had caught people’s attention beyond Jack and his young friends, and the bank was busy enough that quite a few stood close enough to listen in.  And one such man felt interested enough, upon hearing this last bit, to join in, rude though that was.

“A sweep, you say?” said the man in an excitable manner, and then, “Oh dear, you don’t mean…surely he isn’t a member of that notorious Clean Sweep Gang!”

And he said it quite loudly enough to be heard by most everyone in the front lobby.

“Nothing like that,” Jack tried to explain quickly, having experience with how quickly large crowds of people can transfer into mindless mobs.  “I just knew a man named Jimmy who used to sweep out chimneys, that’s all.  I thought that was him, but he said he wasn’t.”

“But he did know your name,” the excitable man pointed out shrewdly, “And he seemed very nervous for an honest citizen.  And after all…this is a bank, and the gang is going around robbing banks…”

“You’re a funny sort to visit a bank,” a woman said, towards Jack, and in a much ruder manner than the excitable man.  “How do we know you aren’t…how do they put it…casing the joint.”

“Oh, you can’t judge by appearances, madam,” Jack answered, in a much friendlier manner than most would have used after not only being insulted for their appearance but being outright accused of intending criminal activities.  “Why, the wealthiest woman I ever knew lived on an island and wore a suit no finer than my own.”

“She wore _less_ , didn’t she?” asked John, while Georgie covered his mouth to hide his giggles.  Annabel didn’t join in, too infuriated by what the woman was implying about Jack.

“Jack doesn’t ‘ _case joints’_ ” Annabel told her sternly, once it had become apparent Jack wasn’t going to defend himself properly.  “He’s a leerie, not a thief.”

“All his sort are thieves when they can get away with it,” the woman sniffed, to the outrage of all three children.

“Never mind him,” said the first man; “What about that Jimmy?  Shouldn’t someone go see what he’s up to?”

“Calm yourself, sir,” said one of the bank’s employees, who, like Jack, saw a mob in the making and was determined to head off a panic. “We shall send someone at once to look into the matter and make sure all is well.  Though I’m sure it is fine.  Our bank has some of the finest securities in the world, and I can’t imagine such low, common criminals as that gang would dare cross our threshold.”

And having said this, he did indeed send two men after Jimmy to check what he was up to.

The crowd calmed, feeling things were being dealt with, whatever _things_ were.  The rude woman glided away to keep what she considered to be better company while she waited for her husband to finish his business at the bank.  The excitable man, perhaps feeling things weren’t quite over yet, did stop asking questions but he also didn’t leave, keeping his eyes on the door through which Jimmy and the bank employees had gone.

Jack tried not to let any of it worry him, especially since he had three young children, all of whom were looking at him and would pick up on his worry.  There was no reason to spoil their outing with his own confusion.

Then the man approached Jack and the children.  The man was not Michael.  Nor was he another questionable old acquaintance.  He was vaguely familiar as someone who worked at the bank and therefore the children, at least, had seen before.

“Mr. Banks asks your pardon and said to tell you it may be a few minutes before he can get away, and if you would prefer to pass on his briefcase and not wait, he will understand,” the man said in perfectly polite tones.

Had Jack been able to see the future, he likely would have taken the man up on the offer.  As it was, he felt uncomfortable handing over what could potentially be a case full of important and private documents to a stranger.  So when Annabel told the man, “No thank you,” and John added, “We’ll wait,” he didn’t contradict them.

The man went away, presumably to inform Michael of their decision.

Without outside interference, Michael would likely have taken a further sixteen minutes to get away, having spent half of that time trying to explain to his boss that the important papers he wanted were just waiting in the lobby and if said boss would allow him to leave he’d have them in a moment, only he’d have to find a way to say this without sounding rude or in any way implying his boss was either annoying, stupid, or being obstructionist.  Then, having finally managed to extract himself from his office without getting himself fired or demoted or otherwise annoying anyone higher than him in the bank, he would have thanked Jack, greeted his children properly, and quite enjoyed the brief meeting with his family during his working hours.  Then he’d have seen them on their way, knowing his children to be in Jack’s sure hands, and been twice as dedicated to his work for having that reminder of who he was working for.

What in actual fact happened was this.

Jack and the children waited, some more patiently than others, for nine minutes.  Georgie, surprisingly, wasn’t the least patient of the three, as he had invented a sort of game in his head where he watched the shoes of passersby and tried to guess what kind of hat the person in the shoes might wear, without peaking until he’d made his guess.  John and Annabel were a bit more antsy, not having thought up a game and still annoyed with the rude woman and curious about Jimmy.  Jack was not much bothered by the rude woman but he was even more curious over Jimmy, as the longer he considered it the more certain he was that that was Jimmy and he could not begin to understand what he’d been playing at trying to deny it before rushing off.  That the excitable man might have been right, and he actually was part of a gang in the act of trying to rob the bank didn’t cross his mind.  Even people with vivid imaginations are less likely to have flights of fancy over acquaintances than strangers, and that certainly had sounded absurd when the man had suggested it.

In this way, the nine minutes passed in the lobby.  Further in the bank, it was passed by some ten individuals, each seemingly unconnected, as they followed a very carefully set plan.

The thing the police who’d investigated their robberies generally failed to note was the consistence with which the gang was able to infiltrate the cleaning staff.  After all, banks did have a known staff, and newcomers should not only have raised questions from the bank employees and guards, but also from the actual cleaning staff that needed to be replaced for the robbery to work.

No one wondered if the gang, maybe, found ins with the staff.  Nothing so vulgar as a bribe, nor so crude as a threat; the gang’s leader had something much better: an ideal.  Whisper the right words, at the right place, to the right person, and you can win their heart.  Banks are only as secure as their weakest link, and becoming friends with the person in charge of taking out the trash or polishing the floors might not get one the keys to the vault, but it did open back doors that the bank would have preferred remain closed.

For those nine minutes, many such backdoors were being opened.  Bank employees who might have questioned a stranger with a broom didn’t bother to question a stranger with a broom who was accompanied by a known cleaner.

Only, one man was questioned, quite insistently and roughly, because he’d acted suspiciously in the lobby.

Jimmy was not the ideal bank robber.  Calm under pressure was not a good description for him.  Liable to panic and hastily do exactly the wrong thing would be much more apt.  So when pressed, and then outright told ‘Perhaps we should take this conversation up with the police,’ what he did not do was stand calm and defiant, acting outraged at the accusations and deflecting any possible suspicions.  Nor did he agree to leave quietly, which was what the men doing the accusing were really hoping for.

He pulled out a gun.

If he had had a steadier hand or stronger nerves, he’d have threatened the two bank employees, then locked them in a closet somehow, preferably tied up and gagged.  That is not how things went down.

In the meantime, Michael was in his office, explaining the location of the important paper that was wanted at that exact moment.  There was a commotion outside.  They did not go to investigate.

“And why,” said Michael’s boss, very firmly ignoring the commotion, making it quite impossible for Michael to do anything other than the same, “are these two papers sticking together?”

“Oh…” said Michael, who very much did not want to explain that he had inadvertently stuck Annabel’s piece of toast into his pocket as he left in a rush, then later placed his hand in the same pocked, and ended in getting jam on his desk, which he cleaned, but there were still instances of stickiness.  And he still had a piece of toast in his pocket.  None of this got explained to his boss, for, fortunately in same ways, extremely unfortunately in others, that was when the shooting started.

There were three gun shots, to be exact, right outside Michael’s office door.

No one was hurt in this instance.

Michael and his boss both ducked at the sound.  Then Michael’s boss, who had already convinced himself that those couldn’t really have been gunshots, ran out of the office to tell off whoever had made that horrible racket.

There was a fourth gunshot.

The gunshots were heard throughout the bank.  To some, it was a terrifying sound that alerted the listeners that something horrible was happening.  To others, it was a sort of alarm, letting them know that carefully laid plans had begun to go wrong, and it was time to start the backup plans, the worst case scenario ones, the ones that likely ended in blood.  To some, notably those on different floors of the building, the gunshots were distant sounds that made them pause and think ‘Huh, that almost sounded like a gunshot, I wonder what it really was’ as they went about their work.

To three men, who had placed themselves carefully in the lobby, it was a sign to pull out their own guns and start shouting at a panicking crowd, words like, “Everyone on the floor, now!” while they secured the front doors.

Jack and three children got on the floor.  This was not going to be a quick, in and out visit for anyone.


	3. Chapter 3

To be utterly fair to Jimmy, he was aiming to miss.  Then again, that was perhaps offering too much fairness to a man reckless enough to both pull out a gun and to start firing in close proximity to other people, not least because his aim wasn’t entirely a conscious decision.  It was more, like most humans, upon first finding it necessary to shoot towards other humans, he instinctively felt the wrongness in the situation and therefore averted trying to actually put a bullet into anyone.  That is why, despite feeling it necessary to actually pull the trigger when confronted with the unarmed bank guards, and despite being only feet away at the time of the firing, the guards did not come to any harm.

The guards, for their part, and under most similar circumstances, would likely be considering the fact that a low paying job guarding someone else’s money wasn’t worth their lives, and they would have run away.  Somehow, Jimmy, even armed, didn’t quite inspire that kind of reaction.

“Here, now,” is what the guards said when Jimmy pulled the gun, and they crouched into the sort of pose that could either be getting ready to run…or getting ready to attack, and perhaps even the guards themselves didn’t know which they intended.

“Back off!” Jimmy shouted in return.  And having made the rather poor decision to brandish the gun in the first place, he felt the only way out was to prove he was willing to use it.  This led to firing at a harmless wall, and very nearly, despite his aiming to miss, firing into one of the guard’s arms.  Aside from being somewhat desperate and reckless, Jimmy was not exactly the best shot.

The guards reacted with much more sensible instincts by dropping to the ground, lowering the chance of a wild bullet accidently finding human flesh.

The door closest to them opened.  Jimmy flinched away, an unfortunate reaction for a man whose finger was still over the trigger of a gun.  It went off.  He didn’t even have a chance to avoid aiming towards other people, it just shot in the general direction he currently had it aimed.

The first three bullets had done nothing more than cosmetic injuries to the building.  The fourth was rather more damaging.

It flew in the direction of the man at the door.  He didn’t have time to duck, or even to voice his surprise, or to startle before the bullet struck flesh, though he did all three in the ensuing silence.

The man at the door had ample freedom of movement to react, having no sudden injuries to hinder him.  It wasn’t his flesh the bullet tore.

Meanwhile, and at more or less that exact moment, Jack flinched.  It was very close timing, too close in fact to be able to be certain whether Jack flinched in response to the startling sound of gunfire, or whether he had, in fact, flinched half a second _before_ the sound tore through the building.

Jack himself would likely shrug and say after, surely, and want to know why it mattered as surely the more important detail for this situation was that there was gunfire at all.  Georgie, if asked, would say he felt Jack flinch like the lightning before the thunder, which made sense to him at least, but then, no one ever asked.  The older two were too startled to make any judgement whatsoever, and no one else was near enough or observant enough to have noticed.  Everyone flinched, after all.

Then the three innocent looking individuals, strategically spread across the lobby, pulled their guns and Jack pressed back against the children, instinctively trying to stand between them and danger, and then everyone was told to lie on the floor NOW!

There was no speaking between any of them, no time and at any rate they didn’t dare, but despite this there was a rather heated argument between Jack and the children in that moment.  Jack wanted them under the bench they had been sitting on with himself in front of them, poor shield though that would make.  Well, more accurately, he wanted them gone from the bank entirely, but failing that option he wanted them in a position of at least some security.  John and Annabel agreed that Georgie should go under the bench, but were less inclined to try and crowd in after him; for one they couldn’t all really fit and for another they wanted to be able to see and for a third, well, they wanted Jack safe just as much as he wanted them safe, and Jack definitely couldn’t fit under the bench.  Georgie was frightened enough to instinctively slide under the bench on his own, but he also wanted to be able to see, while both his siblings and Jack were blocking his view, and he wanted them safe with him and they _weren’t_.

Jack somewhat won the argument due to being in the best position to shield the others.  Annabel and John also won because there really wasn’t room for them to all go under the bench so they were only partly under it and able to look out.  Georgie mostly lost, having already squeezed under the bench of his own accord and having three larger people situated in front of him, but he was able to just see between the others, so long as what he wanted to see were the feet of anyone who walked by.  This was good for the game he had going in his head, but also not, because he had no way of seeing the hat that went with the shoes and had to consign himself to simply not knowing if he guessed correctly.

The shoes he saw were good shoes, but not at all like what most of the gentlemen in the bank wore; more like what a man wore who needed something to protect his feet.  They were leather and heavy and had seen some use, being scuffed, but still in good condition.  Georgie thought they were the kind of boots a cowboy might wear, and imagined the man they belonged to as wearing a cowboy hat.

He would have been very disappointed to discover he was wrong, on both accounts.  They were not cowboy boots, just sturdy working shoes, and the man was not wearing a cowboy hat.  Georgie cannot be blamed for failing in his guess so utterly, however, as his shoes deviated drastically from the rest of the man’s costume.  The man had made some effort to seem a regular businessman, wearing a somewhat nice suit, if slightly ill fitted, and a nice hat to match, but like many who set about dressing to put on an act, he had either forgotten about the shoes or felt them inconsequential.

Georgie got quite a long look at those shoes, because the owner, having with his two friends forced everyone in the bank to the ground and secured the doors, approached their bench and then stood there for a long moment.

“You,” said a gruff voice, that was maybe a little bit how a cowboy sounded to Georgie’s ears, and the shoe nudged out of sight in Jack’s direction.  “Get up.”

Then Georgie had a somewhat improved view as the main obstacle to his sight climbed slowly to his feet.  Georgie could still not see very well from his angle but he was getting pants legs as well as feet now.  Jack, he noted, had similar shoes to the not-cowboy, except Jack’s were in much rougher condition and not so nice looking.  Georgie abruptly amended the cowboy hat to being a similar hat to the one all the leeries wore, incorrectly as has been noted but Georgie couldn’t know.

Georgie felt, rather than heard when John stiffened, and heard, rather than felt, when Annabel made a small, scared gasp.  He could not see or feel what had alarmed his siblings, only guess that the man in the shoes was doing something mean or threatening.

“You a friend of Jimmy’s?” said the gruff voice, not sounding remotely like a leerie, and Georgie’s inner picture changed abruptly back to the cowboy hat.  The voice sounded angry, the question charged somehow, like how the boys at school sometimes sounded when they were working themselves up to a brawl.

Jack didn’t answer.  The working shoes moved closer and Georgie felt everyone squeeze backwards against him in response.

“I asked you a question,” said the gruff voice, not shouting but not nicely either, a threat clearly in the tone.

“Thought I knew him,” answered Jack’s voice, sounding oddly calm, like maybe everything wasn’t as scary as Georgie had thought it was.  “Guess I was mistaken.”

The gruff voice laughed at that, and then there was a sort of scuffle, like maybe he had pushed against Jack, or maybe just acted like he was going to and made everyone lean away again.  Georgie decided the man was scary, even if Jack was calm.  The man didn’t do anything else scary though.

“Well, back down then, on the ground,” said the voice, and then Georgie could see almost nothing, because Jack took the time to make sure he was fully and properly in front of the children as he got back on the floor.

For what felt like a long while, at least five whole minutes, nothing much new happened.  Feet walked by, gruff voices kept saying things like, “Quiet!” and “Stay down!” and “Stop your sniveling,” and “I don’t care who you are, you can lie on the floor with the rest of them!”  That last was to the rude woman who had called Jack a thief.  She also kept hissing at her husband to ‘be a man and do something’ which the man was wisely ignoring.

The three men with guns didn’t really talk to each other.  This wasn’t the plan they had hoped for, but it was one they had planned, and they didn’t need to discuss things now.  They waited, for what, only they knew.

Above them, by a couple of floors, a man stood in his office.  He had heard the gunshots, of course, most everyone had.  They were muffled, both by distance and by the large expanse of stone that separated them, but unlike many in the building who heard, and then dismissed the sound, he had heard and understood.

It had been quite some years since his last robbery, and then it had been in a completely different bank; a branch of the one he now sat in, in fact.  It had been some sixty years since, but that wasn’t the kind of experience that one forgot.  Rather, it was the kind that settled into one’s muscles, making one twitch at cars backfiring.

And then there had been the Great War.  He hadn’t fought in it, not as a soldier.  He was considered too old even then, but all the same, he had had his part to play, protecting his bank’s interests.  Protecting his country.  He knew a gunshot when he heard one.

Unlike Jimmy, this man would have made a superb bank robber.  For one, he didn’t panic at the unexpected, not even when he first tried the sensible course of action, which was to phone the police, and found himself disconnected.  For another, he knew the bank better than anyone alive.  More to the point, he had all the keys.

Still not panicking, and recognizing a likely direction for any sensible bank robber to take, he quietly tottered over to his door, opened it, and poked his head out.

“Mr. Dawes Jr.!” said the woman sitting at the desk just outside his door.

“Do come into my office, Miss Farthing,” he answered, quite calmly, “And lock the door behind you.”

Many women, being faced with such a request from their older, male boss, might have balked.  But Mr. Dawes Jr. was not the sort of man to take advantage, and Miss Farthing felt she knew him well enough to know that.  She was more worried that perhaps his age was getting to him at last; he had always been a bit eccentric, but such an odd request was going a bit far.  Still, she respected him enough (and her job) and trusted him far enough to do exactly as he asked.  She stood, entered the office, and shut the door, turning the bolt with a very audible click.

Maybe half a minute later, two men ran down the hallway, with grim looks of purpose on their faces and guns in their hands.  They did not look like the sort who would have balked at threatening women to get into an office.  They did not look like the type who were going to let a locked door hinder them.

Half a minute was quite a long time.

For instance, half a minute is quite long enough for a man, one floor down who had just been shot by a stray bullet, to bleed to death.

“You killed him!” shouted the very startled bank manager who had not been hit by the bullet.

“I didn’t mean to!” answered the shooter, still dangerously waving around a gun that probably had at least two more bullets in it.  He had a wild look about his eyes that suggested he wouldn’t hesitate to shoot again.  The guards remained on the ground, though they also had a look in their eyes, one that suggested they were considering changing that.  Jimmy simply didn’t inspire the proper amount of fear and respect to hold them down, gun or no.  The bank manager looked scared, but then, the gun was mostly still aimed at him.  He also looked shocked.  He couldn’t seem to decide whether he should keep his eyes on the gun or turn back to look at where Michael lay, very still, his side covered in blood.

“Good God, man,” the manager exclaimed, turning his attention on Jim once more, “he has a family!”

Michael, who wasn’t dead despite a very real bullet having pierced through his flesh, was rather surprised by that last remark.  He hadn’t thought his boss had cared enough about him to know that.

It did not particularly surprise Michael when his boss decided the best course of action, after all, was to run away.

“Hey!” shouted Jimmy when the man suddenly darted away past him.  He might or might not have worked himself up to firing at the man’s back, but he didn’t much get the chance.  The two guards saw the distraction and acted.  They had Jimmy on the ground, the gun sliding harmlessly across the floor, within moments.  They were probably rougher in restraining him than his struggles warranted, but then, he did just shoot one of their coworkers.

Michael did not particularly like getting shot.  It hurt, like a constantly burning poker being thrust against his side, and the blood had rather ruined one of his nice work suits, not to mention the tear.  It had been a shock, feeling it burn through his side, searing past a rib.  Half an inch to his right and the bullet would have missed him completely.  Half an inch to his left and it might have found a much more dangerous passage, perhaps through ribs, into vital organs.  As it was, there was a sickening moment of agony that he tried, belatedly, to dodge.  As distracting as a bullet can be, he made a mess of dodging too, and wound up falling on the floor.  Then, still trying to make sense of the situation, to come to the understanding that he had actually been shot, by an actual bullet, he decided on the course of action least likely to lead to further harm; he lay utterly still and played dead.

The ruse was aided quite convincingly by the fact that he was bleeding rather a lot.  Not as badly as he might have; the bullet was _hot_ , hot enough to at least partly cauterize the very wound it caused, but having a hole, even a small one, ripped across his side had consequences.  Michael looked quite ghastly enough to be convincing.

Generally, playing dead is about the worst survival instinct to have when faced with someone actively seeking harm.  In this situation, it worked rather well, not least because the person causing the harm didn’t really want to, and was shocked to discover he had, apparently fatally so.

It looked, for a moment, like the entire situation was going to be handled very neatly and quickly, and then Michael was going to go down to the lobby and see his children at last, and then probably to hospital.

If Jimmy had been alone in this endeavor, that is exactly what would have happened.  As it happened, there were some thirteen others working towards the same lofty goal of emptying the bank’s vaults into their own pockets.  Most of them were not as bad at bank robbing as Jimmy.

Some of them were less squeamish about bloodshed as well.

Three men were in the lobby, barricading the bank and holding the visitors and workers hostage.  Two were currently seeking out the president of the bank and finding the doors barred.  They would soon be joined by two more who had come from the opposite direction on the off chance the president attempted to flee in one direction or the other.  Four more were already at the vault, two as security officers and two apparently under orders to insert a new security system.  For this purpose, the old system had to be disabled, momentarily.  That left two robbers free in the building.

They both had guns, though they had sense enough not to draw them.  Yet.

The guards really should have been more on their guard when two newcomers came running down the hall towards them.  The real difficulty was that the newcomers were protected in exactly the same way the bank itself had been protected from robbers.  People have an idea in their heads of what a dangerous criminal looks like.  Ideas can be dangerous, especially when they presuppose someone in one’s mind to be harmless.

As it was, it wasn’t until the scared young maid had run right up to him, pulled out a gun, and bashed him on the back of the head that the guard thought to be suspicious of her.  By then it was a bit too late.  He was a bit too unconscious.

The other guard was still conscious, but he suddenly, once again, had a gun pointed on him by a much steadier hand than Jimmy’s.

“Ow,” moaned Jimmy from beneath the weight of the guards.  “They’ve half killed me.”

“Shut up,” answered the maid, who no longer appeared particularly frightened by the situation at hand.  More annoyed than anything.  “You’ve already made a mess of things.  What should we do with them?”

She was speaking to the other woman, also dressed as a maid, rather than to Jimmy.  The _them_ was towards the two remaining bankers who shared Michael’s office, and Michael himself, who had sat up during all the goings on and was somewhat regretting it, in the first place because he could no longer play dead, which seemed the safest way to not get shot again, but mostly because his side really really hurt, and using the necessary muscles to sit up had made it worse.  Bad enough he nearly fainted, and actually missed the last attack on the guards, only coming to understand that they were all still in danger when his co-worker had let out a sort of shriek when the guard got bashed on the head.

“Shoot them?” was the suggested course of action.  She said it casually, as though she didn’t really care either way.  Somehow, Michael found her worse than Jimmy, who had actually and in fact shot him, rather than just suggested it be done.

“Lock them in?” suggested Jimmy, who had managed to get out from under the guards, mostly because the guard who was still conscious was more concerned with looking after his friend than holding the man down.

“We’ll have the lobby locked down by now,” mused the first maid.  “We could take them down there; have all the hostages neatly together.”

Hearing that, Michael next heard a roaring his ears, his heart lurching unpleasantly in his chest, his only thoughts turning towards his children.  His children who were waiting innocently and, he had thought, safely in the lobby.

He didn’t exactly mean to surge to his feet, but some instincts are too strong to be ignored, and the instincts of a father protecting his children are just about one of the strongest forces that exist.  Another strong force, it turned out, was the shock induced by being shot, then having a shock, then trying to stand through all these medical difficulties.  It was probably fortunate that the attempt to stand so suddenly did, in fact, send Michael back to the ground in a dead faint.  Otherwise, his instincts were liable to get him shot.  Again.

As it was, he spent the next five minutes completely unaware of everything, and so missed the final decision.  All he knew was that one moment he was standing, feeling the urgent need to find his children, and the next he was lying down and an alarm was ringing throughout the building.  He was alone in his office.  And he was locked in.


	4. Chapter 4

A lot can happen in half a minute.  A man shot by a bullet has time to bleed to death.  A man knocked out from being struck on the back of the head has time to recover his senses and be ushered, at gunpoint, down to the bank’s lobby with his fellow bank employees.  The world can change in half a minute.

A man, forewarned by the sound of gunfire, can draw his assistant into his office and then barricade the door in half a minute.

By the time the two robbers who were on a mission to retrieve the bank’s president in order to further their aims in robbing his bank, they found the door very firmly barred against them.  Doors in a bank are designed to be fortified, even office doors.  Banging on it did nothing.  Ramming it with their shoulders led to sore shoulders.  Kicking hardly even made a noise against the wood.  Shooting out the lock might have worked, only it was a very sturdy lock and, with great foresight, Mr. Dawes Jr. had taken the initiative to wedge every stick of furniture that he and Miss Farthing between them could shove against the door, and then the two had retreated behind yet another door, which was also locked and similarly barricaded.  The furniture in the office tended to be heavy, and neither Mr. Dawes Jr. nor Miss Farthing were particularly muscle bound, but they were quite motivated and, in the following five minutes or so since the intruders began their efforts to intrude upon the office, their fortifications had held.  Not even the outer office had thus far been breached.

“Now what do we do?” asked Miss Farthing, with commendable calm, though her eyes were very wide and her breathing slightly faster than normal.  The second could also be attributed to all the heavy lifting she had just performed, not a normal task for a secretary.

“Perhaps the window?” suggested Mr. Dawes Jr..  There they were out of luck if they wished to escape on their own; while the single window did open wide, they were far too high for someone of Mr. Dawes Jr’s age and unsteady limbs to safely climb down.  Jumping was most definitely out; it was quite a far drop to hard concrete.  Miss Farthing, being younger, might have had a chance, but her clothes would make the climb difficult and her inexperience in climbing the sides of buildings would also make the effort dangerous.

On the other hand, if they could attract help from the outside, rescuers could easily secure them a safe passage down.  Furthermore, in inspecting the window, Mr. Dawes Jr. was reminded of a feature it included that he found immensely useful in attracting said attention.

Every window in the building was alarmed.  For the convenience of Mr. Dawes Jr., his windows’ alarms were typically turned off during the day, as he might well wish his window open.  It was a very easy matter, however, to turn the alarm back on.  Then, all he had to do was open his own window, and alarms immediately rang throughout the bank.  More to the point, the police were automatically alerted of the intended break in.

The would-be robbers had disconnected many of the security systems.  They had not bothered with the windows.  First, they were on a separate system from the vault security, which is what they really cared about.  Second, they never intended to use the windows, either for entrance or exit.  It was so much easier using the doors.

The alarm rang.  A floor down, Michael hissed in pain, then blinked his eyes in confusion as he was thrust back into awareness after his faint.  Two floors down, the five robbers now overlooking the hostages in the lobby cursed.  The children covered their ears.  Jack continued to try and cover the children.

People outside the bank could hear the alarm.  A couple of people, who had in fact been in the process of banging on the doors, wanting to know why they were barred from the bank during business hours, now looked at each other and tried to work out if _they_ had done that by banging on the doors, and whether it would be best to just walk away now.  In the nearest police station, uniformed men were leaping into action, though several muttered, “It’ll be nothing.  It always is.”  To give them credit, this prediction didn’t slow them down.

And one person, who had been approaching the bank, stopped with a small frown of confusion and looked up.  She saw Mr. Dawes Jr. and Miss Farthing waving from the window.  She saw Miss Farthing then having the idea to hold up a large piece of paper, upon which were the words, “Help, Armed Robbers”.  And she noted, as most people didn’t care to take note of, that there was a bicycle parked near the bank, one that had curiously had its ladder strapped across in an unusual manner that surely would make it harder to control.

Most people, upon realizing what was happening, would react in one of two ways; they would leave, because this was a dangerous place to be, or they would gawk, because it was an interesting place to be, but from what they deemed to be a safe distance, never mind that bullets can travel quite far.

The woman observing all these details did neither.  She went rather white, a shock of fear running through her, but she didn’t run away to safety.  She ran towards the bank.

And among those to take note of the activities at the bank was a young man with a curious bit of equipment.

Far from the bank, another group of men lounged together in a friendly manner, some using the time to mend their clothes, one eating an apple, one simply lying back and enjoying a bit of a nap after a hard morning’s work.  After all, summertime was hard on leeries, and it was a hot morning that didn’t lend itself towards more active pursuits.  They also were listening to their wireless.  It should have been quite a relaxing scene, only there was an air of tenseness among them, a hint of unease.  None of them had taken off their shoes, for one, which was actually quite unusual.  Even the napper had his shoes on.  If asked, they themselves would have said they were perfectly relaxed and nothing was out of the ordinary.  No one asked.

They say leeries have the gift of second sight.  If that were true, surely the men wouldn’t have to learn about the robbery in progress at the bank, hostages inside, from the wireless.  On the other hand, having heard the startling news, there really was no reason for them to look at each other with such alarm, the situation being so far removed from them that it should only have inspired surprise and interest.  And there was certainly no reason for one of them to say out loud, “Where’s Jack?”

Jack, as they could not possibly have known, was sitting quietly in the bank lobby and using his eyes.  He had also been using his ears, but the alarm had rendered them mostly useless.  He had been allowed to sit up; all the hostages were made to sit up, in part because the robbers felt there was no reason not to allow it, in part because the constant influx of new hostages, courtesy of the not-maids, was making things more crowded in the lobby, and in part because Jimmy had tripped over two of the hostages and sitting up made them less of a tripping hazard.  Annabel and John, still mostly shielded by Jack, found they weren’t able to sit up too as the bottom halves of their bodies were still wedged under the bench and Jack was positioned so close to them that wriggling out would have been difficult without his cooperation, which he wasn’t giving.  Georgie had even less of a chance, still being fully under the bench.

Jack wanted to shield all the children, but more than that, he wanted them to escape.  When he could still use his ears properly, he had used them to hear a rather disturbing conversation.

“We’ll take the kids when it’s time.  They’ll be easy to drag along and no one wants a dead kid so no one will be shooting after us.”

Escaping when three people were waving guns about was dangerous.  Escaping when three more had joined them, though Jimmy had lost his gun in the interim, was nigh on impossible.  It didn’t help that he could feel the children growing restless, and rather feared they might, in their own fear, do something desperate and stupid, relying on youthful luck that can be far too fickle when guns were involved.  He knew what had made them tense up too, with each new hostage guided in and made to sit in some corner or other about the room.  They were waiting for their father.  Of course they were; the children weren’t stupid.  And each time, Michael was never one of the hostages.  Jack had to do something, before the children acted on their own.

Jack might, just, be able to get the children to run up the stairs or through a door, further into the bank, but then what?  They would be caught in seconds, and likely punished for the attempt, if someone wasn’t shot outright.

But there were other ways than the obvious to escape the room.

He looked without looking towards one of them.  It would be risky, very risky, and Jack suspected he would have to use himself as a decoy for them to manage it, which made it riskier still because the children were protective of Jack and not likely to like leaving him.  And he couldn’t tell them clearly what to do either.  The alarm was rather loud, loud enough several hostages were taking advantage of it to have whispered conversations, but Jack didn’t have that luxury.

“I am sorry about this, Jack,” said one of the robbers.

“Hello, Not-Jimmy,” answered Jack.  “Fancy running into you again.”  His somewhat casual answer was louder than usual, to make up for the alarm, and so came off as harsher than he meant to; even if he was feeling harsh he didn’t want to antagonize the other robbers.  Jimmy would probably have let Jack get away with it anyway.  The other robber, standing near him, was not so inclined.

“What was that?” he growled, though whether he was more annoyed with Jimmy or with Jack wasn’t clear.  “Feeling familiar, are you?  A nice little reunion in the middle of the bank?” the last bit rang out loudly into sudden silence; someone had finally managed to shut down the alarm.  The silence did not make the irate robber speak softer; he continued to shout, drawing every eye, hostages and robbers alike waiting tensely for the words to turn to violence.  And now he was definitely shouting at Jack; Jimmy had drawn away, looking alarmed and guilty and just the slightest bit annoyed all at once.  “What did you have to go and call the guards for anyway?  We would have been in and out, no bloodshed, no trouble.  And now Jimmy here already killed someone and like as not, we’ll have to shoot one or two of you just to make the cops behave, and it’s all gone to pieces!”  That shouted, the man suddenly turned away and viciously kicked at a wall, making everyone in the room flinch except one of the not-maids, who merely raised an eyebrow.  Then the man turned back again.  And when he spoke, it was with an eerily calm voice.  It still carried in the silence.

“I really should just start with you,” he said, his gun aimed directly at Jack.  “What do you have to say to that?”

One floor up, Michael, under somewhat less tense circumstances, had a very similar mission to Jack; he needed to find a safe way out of a room and he needed his children safe.  He also wanted Jack safe as well, of course.  Jack had not only become a very good friend, he had become something more to Michael’s sister, and Michael did not want his sister to experience anything remotely like what he had felt in losing his wife.  He did not want to imagine how his children would take it either.  But if it had only been Jack in danger, Michael might well have given up after trying first the door, then the barred window and discovered he could escape through neither.  He at best would have cobbled together some sort of weapon out of office supplies and then huddled in a corner and waited for rescue.  Or perhaps not; Jack really was a good friend.  At any rate, Michael currently had ample motivation to find a way out.

There were two obvious entrances and exits to the room; one door and one window.  The window had strong bars on it; it was a bank window after all and the occupants of the office didn’t warrant the same kind of luxury as the bank’s president.  The door was locked from the outside.  Though Michael hadn’t heard the discussion over what to do with him, being unconscious at the time, and so didn’t know how close he’d come to a second bullet hole in a much more vital location, the robbers had ultimately decided that it was too much trouble to lug his potentially dying body all the way to the lobby but it was just plain stupid to leave him free to his own devices, on the off chance he wasn’t going to die.  One of the robbers thought the best course of action was to make sure of his death.  The others disagreed, Jimmy because he didn’t want to kill anyone and felt ill that maybe he had, and the other for a much more pragmatic reason.

“We go around randomly killing, and word will get out.  We’ll lose our best way into buildings if people think we’re murderers.  Just look how long we had to work for it after the Midsommer job.”

“Jimmy already shot him.”

Jimmy, for his part, somewhat resented everyone calling him by name when they’d all agreed to use code names, but didn’t quite dare voice this, not least because he rather thought everyone would point out his name had already been said by his _friend_.  He also wanted to point out he hadn’t meant to shoot anyone, but then thought that would make him sound rather weak, even if it was true.  So he said nothing.

In the end, they shut Michael in the office, with a chair propped against the door handle for good measure, on the off chance there was another key in the office.  There wasn’t.  Michael tried the handle, tried, just once, to force the door, and then had to sit for a bit in agony when his wound protested the attempt.

The door was out as a way to escape and so was the window.  But there was another opening in the room.  Had Michael had a very different sort of childhood that had never included a magical nanny, he would likely have overlooked the alternative exit.

The office had a fireplace.

As a way to escape the bank entirely, it was not a very useful exit.  The bank builders had been smart enough to consider that a chimney could be a possible point of entry and had acted accordingly; the opening at the top was not of a size or shape to allow even something as small as a monkey to climb down it; the designer having recently read a somewhat sensational novel that had nonetheless put into his head the possibility of trained monkeys.

As a way to the outside world, the fireplace was useless.  As a way into another room, however…the thing to understand about the bank was that it was old.  Old, large, drafty buildings are often in the habit of having their chimneys twist together from several rooms.  In a really old building, a sweep could actually get a bit lost, climbing about up there.

Michael noted the fireplace.  His extremely sore side would be a hindrance, and he hadn’t climbed anything in years, but he was motivated.  He had a look.  It was dark, and the sides were smooth enough to make things difficult, but he thought if he could only get up into it, it was narrow enough he might be able to wedge himself and then slide himself upwards.  He didn’t know anything about where he would be going if he did; he wasn’t aware that he couldn’t reach the roof this way or that he could reach another room.  All he knew was that this was an exit, an unguarded exit, and he had to try something.

He dragged a chair over.  The first attempt hurt, like fire in his side, and an ache in his muscles, unused as they were to being used in that manner.  And his hands slid, scrambling in the dark and not finding purchase.  It didn’t help that he had instinctively clutched at his wounded side during part of the attempt, and all the moving around had caused him to bleed quite a bit, inadvertently making his hands slicker when they grasped for purchase.  The difficulty with being wounded is that it can be difficult for the wounded party to assess the severity of their own wound, especially when the person is distracted by an escape attempt or worry for others, has already decided the wound was not too serious, and at any case was avoiding looking at it, even when it could have used a bit of first aide.

Michael didn’t consider his wound at all, in fact, beyond the fact that it _hurt_ and was slowing him down.  He considered instead the problem of the slippery walls.  What he really needed was gloves, but it was summer and he had none.  Failing that, perhaps something to help his hands grip.  Something a bit sticky would be absolutely ideal.  And close at hand.

One floor down, Jack had also been eyeing the fireplace.  He knew the children to be good climbers, and if they could only slip up unseen, he doubted if anyone would figure out where they had gone.  And if they did figure it out, hopefully they’d have a difficult time following.  Children can fit into places adults can’t, and chimneys (as Michael would soon learn) can get very narrow.  But the children weren’t in the habit of climbing into chimneys, the had no experience in it, and it took a certain kind of daring to climb up into the sooty darkness, a daring that experience told Jack the children had in spades, but this was different altogether from anything he’d seen them dare before.  Telling a child to crawl into the dark would be hard.  Telling them when Jack couldn’t voice anything out loud was near impossible.

And now, of course, he wasn’t eyeing the fireplace because he had all his concentration on the gun aimed towards his head.  He did spare a brief look behind the robber, to where another hostage was sitting, very hunched and very still and very much trying not to draw attention to himself or the fact that he was, in actual fact, the excitable gentleman who had in actual fact been the one to demand guards be sent after the suspicious sweep.  Jack could probably have pointed this out and brought some of the attention off himself.  Of course, he didn’t.  He trained his eyes again on the man holding the gun.

 “Well?” demanded the gruff robber.  “What do you say?”

“Can I move first?” asked Jack.  “Don’t want you to miss and accidently hit one of the kids.”

He could feel said kids tense behind him, practically vibrating with unspent energy, and he frantically pushed back against them, hoping that would somehow keep them silent.  He might not have second sight, but he could practically see what would happen if the man holding the gun did tell Jack to move so he could shoot him.  The children were going to protest.  Loudly and dangerously and someone was going to get shot.

There was a very long moment, perhaps even half a minute, when the robber neither lowered his gun, nor fired it, nor allowed Jack to move.

Outside the bank, police officers gathered around all the bank’s doors.  If they were surprised to actually find the bank locked tight and the bank’s president hanging out an upper window with his secretary, waving about a sign warning of armed robbers inside, they didn’t show it (but they were, surprised, that is).  Some called for ladders to get the people at the window down.  Some were sending word back to headquarters, apprising them of the situation.  One was shouting at a newsman to back off, never mind it was the story of the century.  And one had the luckless job of trying to escort a young woman away from the bank’s vicinity to safety, when she was very determined to remain within the danger zone.

“That’s my family in there,” she shouted, and refused to leave.  Not even when they all heard the sharp retort of a gun going off somewhere beyond the door.

Inside the bank, Georgie Banks felt very small and very useless and very scared as he huddled under a bench and behind his siblings and tried to work out what was going on by the words he could hear and the very little he could see.

For a while, the loud alarm had robbed most of his ability to make sense of anything, but it had stopped.  Only now the man who was maybe a cowboy, but a black hat sort if ever there was one, was talking about shooting Jack.  He could feel Annabel and John practically vibrating against him.  He could see Jack, barely, sitting up straight in front of them.  He could see the not-cowboy’s shoes.  And then, in the utter and complete silence, there had been the deafening sound of a gun going off at close range.

He sensed Jack jerking sharply backwards in response, heard Annabel and John both scream and jump.  He heard the not-cowboy laugh.  Jack didn’t fall over, though.  Georgie didn’t have a clear view of all of him, but Jack didn’t fall over, though he was shaking, Georgie could feel faint vibrations coming off him through the bench, and there was nothing Georgie could see that suggested blood.  He was mostly certain the not-cowboy hadn’t shot him.  Maybe he missed.  Maybe he just liked scaring people.  The bank was deadly quiet after the gunshot, except for a ringing in Georgie’s ears.  That had been _loud_.  But now all was quiet again.  And then he heard the footsteps approaching, the click of heels against a marble floor, and the sound was coming their way.

When he saw them, he still knew very little of what was going on, but he did know a couple of things.  Firstly, that the owner of those shoes was a woman.  Second, her appearance startled most everyone around Georgie, enough that Jack dropped his stiff posture enough to fall back against the bench, and Annabel’s hand grasped at Jack.  Third, the sort of woman who wore those shoes would also be wearing a very pretty, very stylish hat.  One that would likely perfectly match both her shoes and her umbrella, which he could just see the tip of resting against the ground like a cane.


	5. Chapter 5

That morning, or rather, the evening before, long before the decision to return Michael his briefcase, Jack and Jane had made plans.  They weren’t certain plans, just a sort of idea that maybe, if they both found themselves free, they might spend some of the day together.

Jack didn’t feel disappointed or reluctant when the children waylaid him just as he intended to bicycle all the way to Jane’s flat.  He liked Jane (really liked Jane), but the plan to meet had always been tenuous; there was a chance he’d arrive at her flat and find her gone, though likely with a note to explain where.  Anyway, he liked the children, and he liked Michael, and he was not the slightest bit reluctant to help them out in their hour of need.

Before doing so, while the children were still in the midst of tidying up themselves and the kitchen and while Ellen was distracted by finding the shopping money, Jack took the time to phone Jane.

Jane, who had not found any last minute errands or SPRUCE business that needed her attention, and was hoping the same would be true of Jack (only it would be helping his friends out or something of that kind, not SPRUCE business), was mildly disappointed to hear that he _had_ been coming over but was now helping the children bring Michael his briefcase.  Mostly, though, she was amused, and rather fond, and, after all, was certain they would soon still be able to meet, just not so quickly as hoped for.

Then, after they had both hung up, she got the idea to meet Jack and the children at the bank.  Perhaps if she were quick enough, she would even have a chance to see her brother (and tease him over the briefcase, of course, but mostly just for the enjoyment of stopping by).  She would get to see Jack sooner, and she would get to see her niece and nephews, who she always enjoyed spending time with.  They could make a day of it together, after the shopping was done.

Only, as she set about with the intention of meeting them, the entire world seemed to be conspired against her doing so.  Some days were lovely, lucky sorts of days when everything went right, and busses pulled up just as she walked up to the stop, and all the lights were in her favor, and she discovered money lost in a crack by the road, and she ran into just the person she most wanted to see, completely by chance.  Then there were the other sort of days, when she was the one who lost the money by the road, and the busses didn’t come or, if a bus did come quickly to her stop, it also soon broke down once she’s on it, and the weather was all rain and she ran into exactly the person she was most hoping to avoid.  This day was more like the latter, except it wasn’t raining and Jane didn’t lose any money out of her pocket.

First, she couldn’t find her shoes, and then once she had those, she couldn’t find her bag.  She was beginning to wonder if Michael’s losing his briefcase was catching, only she hadn’t forgotten her things so much as misplaced them.  Then, when those were found, or at least suitable replacements to the ones she wanted (and she didn’t need to look nice, just for the children (just for Jack), but, well, it’s sensible to wear nice shoes when one goes out and a nice hat would keep the sun off, never mind whether it looked good on her), well, once she was appropriately dressed and ready, she found she’d misplaced her keys.

On the plus side, she found them in the very bag she’d given up on finding, so there was that.  Then, having run out the door, she nearly bowled over one of her neighbors, and unfortunately it was Mrs. Mackerel, who in appearance and demeanor was very suited to her name; whenever she had the chance, she felt it her duty to inform Jane in all the ways Jane was deficient, starting with her un-ladylike choice of wardrobe, moving on to her activism with SPRUCE, and ending with her lack of husband, coupled with the amount of attention she has recently paid to a most unsuitable man, namely Jack.  Jane generally tried to be polite in return and get away as quickly as possible, in part because it was in Jane’s nature to be respectful to her elders, even elders she detested, but mostly because Mrs. Mackerel’s husband owned the apartment complex Jane lived in, and Jane did not particularly wish to move.

This morning, Jane was rather less inclined to be civil, both because she was in a hurry and because Mrs. Mackerel started with, “Off to see that lamplighter?” only she said the word ‘lamplighter’ with such contempt that she might as well have said, “Off to see that cockroach?” and Jane’s patience always ran shorter when those she cared about were insulted than when she herself was attacked.  She was rather well suited to Jack in that regard.  So instead of simply answering with something like, “Good morning,” and hurrying off before more could be said, Jane paused and answered, in the most cheerful tone she could manage, “I _am_ off to see Jack, thank you for asking.  By the way, Mrs. Mackerel, he thinks you a dish with a voice like bells.  He told me as much.”  He had too, almost his exact words, only his version had been ‘old dish’ and ‘a voice like bells on a cord’, and once Jane had worked out what that was leerie speak for she had first scolded him, then giggled for a solid half hour.  Now, while Mrs. Mackerel was still trying to work out if she was being mocked or insulted somehow, Jane could not resist going on to say, “It’s a good thing you and Jack are such good friends, because I have half a mind to ask him to marry me this very afternoon and then he will be your neighbor, of course.  Won’t that be grand?  You are always telling me I should get married.”

It might not have been the wisest answer, but it was certainly satisfying to see the woman so utterly gobsmacked, even if it did leave Jane with an odd feeling in her stomach when she made jokes about marrying Jack.  Because maybe that hadn’t completely been a joke.  Well, it certainly wasn’t happening that afternoon, but…well.  Jane ran off before Mrs. Mackerel could find her voice and inform her exactly what she thought of that with her voice like bells.

And then Jane just missed the bus that would have, had she made it onboard, gotten her to the bank with plenty of time to join Jack and the children before the incident started.  Feeling antsy, she decided to walk along to the next stop, and so missed the second bus that had shortly followed the first, and in this way missed her chance to arrive with exactly enough time to enter the bank before the doors were barred, though she’d have had to sit across the room from the others.

As it was, she missed both, and when she finally did arrive at the bank, it was to locked doors and an alarm sounding and the very clear evidence, in the form of Jack’s bicycle, that he and the children, along with her brother, were somewhere inside.

A different sort of woman might have screamed or fainted or otherwise voiced her horror while shrinking back and waiting for the situation to be resolved by the authorities.  A more sensible version of Jane would react by waiting and watching and allowing the police to do their job and avoiding making herself into another hostage situation…or death.

Jane, being neither the shrinking sort, though she did feel a moment of faintness pass over her as the full horror of the situation became known to her, nor the most sensible type (which is to say, she had sense, plenty of it, she just chose to ignore it), Jane chose instead to run up to the bank and try the doors.

When the police officer finally convinced her away from the doors, he likely thought it a victory.  Had he known Jane a bit better, he might have recognized a regrouping tactic when he saw it.  She couldn’t get to her family through the front door; it had been silly and dangerous to try.

There were other ways into the bank.

If Jack could climb Big Ben to turn back time for her family, she could certainly find a way to climb inside a bank to save hers…Jack included.  She just might need some help to do it.

Inside the bank, deep inside, four persons who were probably not actually security experts or security officers were in deep discussion.  The gunshots had been muffled by the vault, almost to the point of leaving them unsure they _were_ gunshots, but the alarm that followed was crystal clear.  They knew their first plan had failed.

“It’s Midsommer all over again,” one of them muttered nervously, hand wrapped around his gun though he didn’t draw it out into the open.  There was no need; no one was with them at the vault and, as the minutes passed, they sensed they had time enough to go about their business.  Anyway, on the off chance someone from the bank did come running in, they still looked mostly innocent, unfortunate timing notwithstanding.  They weren’t obviously armed, and they had been invited in.  True, the one doing the inviting didn’t technically work for the bank anymore, but they had the right papers and had spoken to the right people before being escorted down.

No bank guards or police officers stormed in, which was good.  Their own men didn’t come either, which was not so good.  They had hoped to quietly acquire the bank’s president before anyone knew anything was wrong.  It would have made opening the vault easier.  Clearly, there had been more than one snag in the plan.

“Why can’t we just blow it open?  They already know we’re here,” asked one of the not-security officers.  A security expert gave him a _look_ in return.  The expert was not a large man.  He was slender, somehow giving off the appearance of being short, though in fact he was almost six feet tall.  It was probably being surrounded by muscle bound thugs that caused the illusion.  He looked like someone who worked in an office, quiet and mild and unassuming.

No one who looked at him would think ‘leader of one of the most notorious bank robbing gangs in England’.  He didn’t think of himself that way when he looked in the mirror.

His men called him Robin.  That wasn’t the name his mother had given him, but then, codenames were important in protecting their identities.  It would do no good to run away from the police only for the police to find them by looking up their addresses in a directory.  Robin didn’t really consider the men and women under him as a gang of villains.  If he had, they would not have had the success they’d enjoyed.  When Robin found the discontented workers, the slighted secretaries, the overworked maids, the underappreciated sweeps, and told them they deserved more, he was listened to.  And when he said he believed in redistributing the wealth to those who truly needed it, who truly _deserved_ it, he believed what he said, and he was believed in return.

Robin never set out to make wrong choices.  In his mind, every choice he had made up to this very moment was important and necessary.  He was the hero of his own story.  In his mind, his men (and women) were noble and good, and they believed in the cause.  That some of them may have _enjoyed_ the fear they saw when they threatened others never crossed his mind.  He led by example and he talked his way into banks with his convictions (and generosity); the guns were just backup, just in case.  If everything went his way, they’d never use them.  And sweeps are lucky.  Never mind who came up with that name for his gang, for bank after bank they walked in poor and walked out richer and got clean away.

The Midsommer Bank job had almost ended his career.  It was the first time blood had been shed, mortal blood, and that sort of thing raised doubts about who was in the right.  Still, the Great Slump was enough to create doubts about those doubts, and when Robin said, fully believing his own words, that the deaths had been tragic but unavoidable, that it had been a case of them or us, and after all the ‘them’ were those elite who used the poor for their own gain, the policeman who took bribes, the fat banker, and as for that young teller with the family the news kept lamenting, well, he had been in the crossfire.  Perhaps it wasn’t their bullets that got him.  Perhaps it was the police.

The police said it was the Clean Sweeps’ bullets, but who could trust the police?  Robin could be _trusted_.  And things had gone so well for him; surely some cosmic force of Good was on his side.  The people were on his side, because he was _right_ , and with this job, he’d be in the position to return a lot of good to the people.  The rich were just hoarding all their money in that vault, while the poor starved.  It was balance, to return the money to the people.  It was _fair_.

So when asked why they couldn’t just blow up the vault, a question he had already explained during their planning phase, Robin did not growl or shout or call the man stupid.  That wasn’t how Robin spoke to his men.  He commanded respect because he believed he deserved it, that everyone deserved respect.  He had earned respect.  He didn’t need to shout.

He left that to the not-security officer’s companion, who responded with a friendly cuff to the side of the man’s head.

“Boss told us already,” he growled.  None of the gang ever alluded to Robin as the boss; no one wanted to paint a target on his back.  Not even when they were alone and the ‘boss’ was standing right next to them.  “The vault is _solid_ ; if we got through it, we’d likely bring the roof down on us.  You want that?”

In theory, the vault could be blown open without harming the surrounding structure, but it would have to be gotten so exactly right it wasn’t worth the risk, not when they would soon be able to walk in and take what they liked.  Having the bank’s president would have helped with that, assuming he could be made to see reason (hostages usually worked), but they could do it on their own too.  It would just be slower.  And the longer the job took, the more time the police had to cover the bank, to cover the exits, maybe even _the_ exit, the one almost no one knew about in the sewers.  The longer it took, the more likely it was for things to go really wrong, and that way lay bloodshed and violence.

It didn’t even occur to Robin that it could also end in failure.  They might have to fight their way out, but right was on their side.  Whichever plan they were forced to fall back on, they would prevail.

When one of their people finally did come down to them, it was not with the president.

“What news?” asked Robin, in his quiet manner.

“President and his gal locked ‘emselves in their office.  We could get through in time, but we don’t have it.  Time, that is.  They’re at the window and fire brigade will have them down long before we could get to them.  Our guys are still trying but it ain’t promising.”

Robin accepted this news quietly, a thoughtful expression coming over his face rather than angry.

“A resourceful man, Mr. Dawes Jr.  I didn’t think he had it in him.  Well, and what of the rest of the bank?  Is it secure?”

“All the doors are barred.  We’ve been rounding up any employee we can find and sticking ‘em in the front.  Two possible deaths so far, them not us, near as we can make out.  Jimmy started it; shot a banker.  The banker was alive when we locked ‘im in his office, but dead to the world.  Could be dead proper now.  Sweetie thought it best not to make it sure; would look bad on us.”

“Code names, Angel,” Robin reprimanded mildly.  “And it wouldn’t just ‘look bad’, it would _be_ bad.  We don’t kill except in self-defense.”

The woman who was probably not really named ‘Angel’ ignored the second reprimand and answered the first.  “No good in Jimmy’s case anyway; one of the hostages knew ‘im; it’s what spooked Jimmy into drawing his gun in the first place.”

“Even so.”

“Fine.  _Ratty_ shot the banker.   Maybe he mistook ‘im for Weasel.  Then Little shot one of the hostages.”

Robin, at this news, didn’t look so much annoyed as confused, and maybe just a bit exasperated, rather like a school teacher learning of the latest antics of his students.

“And _why_ did Little John decide to shoot a hostage?”

“Didn’t _decide_ to, exactly,” answered Angel with a very unconcerned shrug.  “Little was threatening one of ‘em, and someone pushed him from behind.  Gun went off.  Lucky it missed the kids.”

A bit of time before this conversation was taking place, Michael was not dead proper, but he certainly felt a bit like he was moving in that direction.  His side hurt.  His muscles ached.  And it was hot, except also somehow freezing, and dark, and tight, and _really really dark_ , and, altogether, if it weren’t for the motivation of his children, Michael would likely have turned back long ago, or never have ventured up the chimney in the first place.  He couldn’t imagine how he’d managed it before when he was a boy.  Well, he knew how…it was _her_ , really.  He’d only been in the chimney half a moment before emerging again, flown free, no climbing involved.

There was no her now, and he was not a little boy.  He had managed to crawl up, slowly.  He didn’t have gloves, still.  What he did have was Annabel’s toast.

It shouldn’t have worked, using toast and jam as something to aid in gaining traction.  If he hadn’t been so desperate, not willing to climb back down off the chair once he was up, not even with the pragmatic purpose of finding something better to cover his hands with, he would have laughed at the very notion.  But he was desperate, and his limbs felt a bit shaky, and maybe it would be hard work to climb the chimney (it was) but it felt like it would also be hard work to crawl back into the office.  And maybe he knew himself well enough to realize he was scared stiff of crawling up into that dark narrow path, and if he did pull away, he’d be convincing himself it was useless to try.  And he had to try.

He had broken the toast into two bits.  It had been long enough since breakfast that the bread, mostly hard and dry despite the jam, had begun to go stale.  That was all the better for his purpose; fresh or soggy bread would have torn to pieces in moments.  The jam was still sticky, but it was only jam; it shouldn’t have worked.

The funny thing about having experienced the impossible was, Michael knew it shouldn’t work, but he did it anyway.

He crawled up, and it was slow, and it was hard, only the difficulty was his friend, because it was a distraction.  He had to put all his energy into how to hold himself up, how to draw himself ever upwards, and had less to worry about pain, about dark, about what might be happening to his children.  To Jack.

It seemed a lifetime when he came to the first branch.  He had a choice then.  Keep climbing up into the dark.  Or go down again, down, towards where he felt a draft.

He’d like to say he made his decision based on logic and deductive reasoning, but really, it probably had more to do with how badly his limbs were beginning to shake.  Much worse, and there wouldn’t be a choice at all, because he’d be falling.  He went down.

And down.

He came out of the dark in a cloud of soot and a clatter that should have had him captured in seconds.  He was in the lobby.  Somehow, impossibly, he was in the lobby.  And the lobby was utterly full of people.  There were employees and there were visitors, all sitting silent and pale and scared.  There were armed men standing strategically around the room.  They should all have turned immediately at the first sound he’d made, at the first fall of soot.

Only, at the exact moment he climbed, dropped, really, there was the loud retort of a gunshot.  That quite had everyone’s attention, fully and utterly.  Had Michael planned for it, he never in a million years could have timed his fall to be so perfectly if he had tried.  The timing was so perfect, in fact, that Michael was half convinced he’d been the one shot.  Again.  The fall had certainly awakened enough agony in his side for that to have been the case.  But no one looked towards him and he had time to understand that the bullet hadn’t come for him either.  There was a long moment of stillness.  Long enough for Michael to look around, to begin to take in the scene and make sense of the situation.  He didn’t see his children, not at first.  He saw the large man, dressed as a business man and holding a gun.  The man laughed into the silence, then turned and looked behind him.

“Now really,” said the man, “Look what you made me do.”

And Michael saw Jack.  And he saw the blood.

And like Georgie, he then heard the clatter of heels on marble before turning to see the person who approached.  He stared.  Everyone stared, because it was so unlikely.  What woman would dare, not after one of the robbers had just shot a man?  Was she one of them?

She wasn’t.  Michael was absolutely certain she wasn’t one of them.  She never could be.  And the man with the gun turned and aimed his gun at her.

It was shortly after this that the woman, not _her_ , rather Angel, the robber dressed as the maid, left to meet up with Robin in the vault and started to share all that had happened.

“…kids?” Robin asked her, after hearing of their lucky escape from the accidental shooting of a hostage.

“Hostages.  Were visiting the bank when we closed it up.  The guy who made Jim…fine, _Ratty_ , he brought ‘em.  Odd group; the kids are dressed posh but not him.  He could’ve been one of us.  Knew Ratty from his sweep days.”

“And you let Little shoot him?”  That growled question wasn’t from Robin, though Robin did look quite disconcerted by this news.  It was from the same security guy who had told off his companion for wanting to blow open the vault.  “We can’t go round shooting our kind of people!”

This was _worse_ than Midsommer.  Their success was based on their image, which they had carefully crafted, setting themselves up as the protectors of the people, distributors of the wealth.  Every person in the gang, whether they actually believed in it or not, understood the necessity of their image.  If they killed bankers, it would be bad, but not insurmountable.  If they killed someone working class, someone _poor_ , one of those they were meant to protect, then what kind of image would they have?  Murderers, thieves, _villains_.

“Didn’t shoot him, exactly.  Told you, Little was shoved from behind.  He was angry ‘bout Jimmy being made, but he’s not so stupid.  Anyway, he mostly missed.  And then…well…there was a woman.”

“A hostage?” asked Robin, massaging his head now, waiting to hear more ways everything had gone wrong.  “I suppose you shot her too.”

“Kinda,” answered Angel, sounding evasive now, and it wasn’t clear what part of his question he was answering.  Robin frowned at her.

“What do you mean, kind of?” he demanded, his tone falling just short of harsh in its seriousness.  What he really wanted was for her to explain they definitely hadn’t shot her as well.

“The thing is…she ain’t one of us but…we never nabbed her.  She just kind of walked in, all on her own.  Said she came in through the door.”

“The door that was barred?”

“She said she was a nanny.  Said it like that explained everything.”

At that, Robin’s eyes grew very large.

Outside the bank, while police gathered and planned, a very different group did the same.  If there was one thing Jane knew how to do, it was organize.

 


	6. Chapter 6

The bullet missed.

Jack flinched back as the sheer volume of a bullet exploding from a gun assaulted him, leaving his ears ringing.  It was loud enough to stop an entire room of people from noticing the lesser clatter of a man half falling from the chimney.  It was loud enough that Jack never actually heard the sound of footsteps approaching, though Georgie and Michael both did.

He didn’t notice the bloody scratch across his face or the gash at his neck, perilously close to doing fatal damage.  It wasn’t the bullet that struck him; that went wide when the robber was pushed from behind.  The bullet hit a pillar.  It was the bits of pillar that hit Jack.  He didn’t even feel it, still reeling from not being shot, adrenalin pumping through his veins.

Jack heard the laugh of the man in front of him, somewhat muted behind the ringing in his ears, like it came from underwater or a great distance, and saw the fear and horror in the face of the man who had tried to be a hero and almost caused a tragedy instead.  It wasn’t until he saw faces turn that he turned to look at the newcomer.

She wasn’t one of the robbers.  By default, that should have made her one of the hostages; the entire room was a stark division between Us and Them.  Really, the man with the gun should have been aiming it towards her, should have been demanding that she get back down on the ground.

Except.

She didn’t act like a hostage.  Somehow, this made it much more difficult for any of the robbers to treat her like one.  She walked like she had a perfect right to be walking, fearless and unintimidated and with a very strong air of disapproval.  That look spoke to the robbers, dug deep into their earliest memories, and they could no more have pointed a gun at her than pointed a gun at their own mothers.  Just as people can have locks inside their heads about places, and can have preconceived notions about people based on appearances, so too can people have locks inside their heads about people.  In this case, the woman did not act like a hostage and did not look like a threat, and somehow all six robbers currently guarding the room decided to let one of the others put her in her place.  The end result was that none of them did.

“Mary Poppins,” said absolutely no one, because no one who knew her as such dared.  The unnamed young woman carried herself across the room, posture poised, nose in the air, disdaining rather than snobbish; it was the expression of a person who looked down on bad manners, not low class.  It was the comportment of a woman who expected to be treated with respect, and she carried the look far more successfully than the rude woman who had such a low opinion of Jack and had wanted her husband to attack the ruffians like a man.

The people who recognized her did not speak.  Michael certainly didn’t want to draw attention to his entrance.  Jack didn’t want to risk letting the mad gunman know here was yet another person Jack was acquainted with.  The children, or the children who could see her clearly, had no intentions of giving her away in case secrecy was necessary, and in any case it was hard to break the silence the robbers had imposed upon them, fear holding their tongues for so long that it had become difficult to find them again.

Finally, the robber generally known as Little did aim his gun in her general direction, though not squarely at her, and grunted out, “Who are you?”  It came out perhaps even louder and rougher than he intended; the same gunshot that was still ringing in Jack’s ears affected him as well.  At any rate, he got the full brunt of her disapproval as she turned her gaze on him.

“I am the nanny,” she answered coldly, “of the children you almost shot.”

The robber known as Little was clearly intimidated in spite of himself, perhaps even ashamed, but he nonetheless managed to answer in aggravated tones, “Well, where you been then?  Why is our friend Jack here in charge of your children?”

Marry Poppins did not deign to answer, turning away to give Jack a much warmer regard.

“Hello, Jack,” she said, just as though they were meeting in the park and not in a bank surrounded by gun wielding thugs who were to blame for the blood soaking into Jack’s collar.  Jack managed a sort of dazed smile in return.  He was not entirely sure she was really there, that he hadn’t been shot in actual fact or knocked out and was now dreaming.  Perhaps the whole day had been a dream; it all felt surreal enough to be.

“Here, you,” grunted Little, “I asked where you came from.”

This time, along with a disapproving look, Mary Poppins did offer an answer.  “I came in through the door.”

The way she said it, it suggested it was the only obvious answer, never mind that Little immediately answered with, “But the doors are all barred!  And we’d a seen you in the building.”

“Here now,” said a new voice, one of the robbers but the only one not threatening the room with a gun.  Jimmy said the words, then looked like he rather wished he hadn’t as the entire room turned to look at him with various expressions of annoyance, disdain, or impatience.  Michael flinched slightly to look at him, and was annoyed with himself for doing so; sure the man had shot him, but he didn’t have a gun now and hardly looked threatening.

“Yes, Jimmy?” said Mary Poppins when the silence had lasted just a bit too long.  Jimmy slouched down, clearly ill at ease with the look she was now sending his way.  The odd thing about it was that she didn’t look disdainful or unkind.  She looked questioning, like she didn’t know he had just shot a man, a man with a family, and somehow that made him feel worse than if she had looked accusing.

“You know her too?” Little demanded, giving Jimmy an incredulous look.

“See, that’s Mary Poppins,” Jimmy said, as if that should explain everything.  “If anyone could get through a locked door, it’s her.”

“Yeah?” said Little.  “Well, she looks like another hostage, to me, and a tricky one.”  Then he approached her, raising his gun threateningly, but he still didn’t stick it in her side like he could have.  He offered his arm.  She accepted it as her due, and her calm expression didn’t change even as Little tried to whisper in her ear.  Thanks to Little’s ringing ears, his whisper was loud enough to be heard by the whole room.  Then again, maybe he meant it to be.  It wasn’t a secret, what he was telling her.

“You going to sit here, with your chums, Miss.  And if I turn around and find you gone or…or misbehaving, I take it out on your little friends here.  And if you keep playing games, the last bullet is for you.  Got it?”

“I never play games,” Mary Poppins answered, entirely disdainful of the notion as she allowed herself to be seated at the bench.

“You got this?” said another robber, not to Mary Poppins or any of the hostages, but to the fellow robbers, and at Little’s nod, Angel left the room, first to see what her friends were up to outside of the president’s door, then to the vault to inform all that had passed.

It took Angel maybe five minutes to travel.  The bank was large but she knew exactly where she was going and despite giving a relaxed appearance that suggested taking her time about things, she was extremely efficient in her movements.  It took another minute for her to share everything, perhaps two as then Robin took the time to tell her what he wanted to happen next.  It was no more than seven minutes after she left, maybe eight, that she returned to the lobby.  Seven to eight minutes can be a lifetime.

She came back and went straight to Little.  It was clear that, despite his overzealous and emotional displays with his gun, or perhaps because of them, he was important among the Clean Sweeps.  If one didn’t know any better, one might assume him the leader.  Only, the first thing she said to him was, “Talked to Boss.  We’re to take a hostage or two up.  One of the kids, I’m thinking.  And he wants the nanny brought down.  With the leerie.”

They turned to look at where Mary Poppins still sat primly.  Jack sat next to her, looking slightly paler than was probably healthy, though at some point he had clearly been allowed to have his cuts seen to.  At least the one across his cheek was mostly cleaned up; the one at his neck was proving to be more difficult.

It wasn’t this sight that had the woman called Angel frowning though.

“Where are the kids?” she asked.

Outside the bank, a small group of men were travelling to the bank.

Luck seemed to be against them doing so.  Just as Jane had trouble finding her belongings and ran into all the wrong people, the leeries misplaced wallets or found holes in pockets where money should be and several had lost their hats, but the hats weren’t much missed because the day was gray but hot.  Had they attempted to take the underground, they would have found their line delayed.  Had they attempted to take a bus, it would have broken down on them.

They had no proof that this is what would have happened, of course, because they did neither.  They rode their bicycles.  Two found flat tires and had to ride with a friend.  A third somehow managed to misplace his entire bicycle, and taking too long trying to find it, wound up running rather than riding.  None of them bothered about the missing items.  They weren’t important.  They were only hats.  It was only money.  They had to get to the bank.

They had left roughly ten minutes after the alarm in the bank had started.  It generally takes about half an hour to cross the city to reach the bank from their home.  Working public transport could have gotten them there in ten minutes.  Bicycling from their home, they would likely have arrived at the bank some forty minutes after the robbery had begun, too late to be of much help.

Luck was contrary that day, but sometimes that just means making your own luck.

The men didn’t take their shoes off as they relaxed, and the moment they heard about the robbery they were out the door.  Perhaps they bypassed the public transportation because some instinct told them it would break down, the same instinct that told them to wear their shoes even as they relaxed, the same instinct that had them looking for Jack despite having no proof he was anywhere near the bank.

Even more likely, they didn’t bother to take public transportation because it only would have taken them one stop to reach the City.  They weren’t relaxing at home.  They were at a friend’s who lived rather closer to the bank than they did.  Their bicycles were actually faster from there than public transportation.  Even for the one who had to run.

The events of the robbery happened fast.  It had not even been ongoing for twenty full minutes when Angel left the lobby.  It took her roughly seven minutes to act as messenger between the robbers.  Radio would have been faster, but somewhat useless in the vault.

Seven minutes was a very long time.  It was enough time for Mary Poppins to persuade the kind gentlemen holding them all hostage to allow her to look after Jack’s cuts.  It was enough time for three children and one rather disheveled father to relocate themselves.  It was enough time for a worried sister to regroup.

It was enough time for a group of worried leeries to arrive at the bank.

“Where are the children?” Angel demanded, looking at the bench where, when she had left, the children had been huddled beneath.  There was no one underneath it now.

“Needed a trip to the water closet,” Little answered, not particularly concerned.  “Ratty went with ‘em.”

Angel raised an eyebrow to that.  “You sent Jimmy alone with two children?”  Then, dismissing what she clearly felt was lunacy, she said, “No time to wait on them.  Get the woman and send her up.  She’ll do fine.  Was made to be a damsel in distress, that one.”

“Help!” cried the rude woman to whom Angel now gestured, and then, to her husband, “Save me!  You must rescue me from these ruffians!”

“Do go quietly,” said her husband with some concern.  “And I say, if you do hurt her, I’ll…I’ll…do something quite horrid.”

With no sign of pity, but with great looks of annoyance, two of the men among the armed robbers dragged the woman along and out the door.  Angel stepped after them briefly to make sure they understood their purpose, then stepped back in again to approach Mary Poppins and Jack.

“Nanny, Leerie,” she said by way of addressing them.  “Up you get.  Boss wants you.”

“You sure you should take them alone, Angel?” Little asked, eyeing Jack with some suspicion more than Mary Poppins.  Despite having such women as Angel and Sweetie in his own gang, he still had ideas about who was the more dangerous when seeing a man and a woman together.  Angel, who eyed both hostages with equal caution, didn’t bother to answer, merely gesturing with her gun for the two to get a move on.

At this point, it might be interesting to know that several events had occurred more or less simultaneously while Angel made her move towards securing her two prisoners to take to her boss.

One somewhat important event of note was that the fire brigade had finally managed to raise up a ladder to Mr. Dawes Jr.’s window.  The four ruffians outside his door had managed, by some show of force, to push through the first door into the large office, but were thus far thwarted from gaining entrance through the second door.  It seemed they were doomed to fail, as rescue was at hand.  Had Mr. Dawes Jr. simply allowed himself to be removed down the ladder, the robbers would most certainly have failed.  Mr. Dawes Jr. did not simply allow himself to be removed down the ladder.

“I insist the young lady goes first,” he said at his moment of rescue.

“Don’t be silly Mr. Dawes Jr.,” the lady in question answered.  “I can wait a moment to go down.”

“I refuse,” was the banker’s response.  The argument delayed any of their escape down the ladder by at least a minute.  In the end, Miss Farthing allowed herself to be rescued, if only to stop the argument and get a move on so her boss could be rescued in turn.

At the same time this argument was happening, Jimmy was somewhat busy himself as he worriedly banged at the door to the toilets and shouted at the occupants inside.

“I…I’ll shoot the lock off, see if I don’t, and you will be sorry!  You can’t hide in there all day!”  If he had still had his gun, he might even have been annoyed enough to try it.  He didn’t like being made a fool, and not stopping the children he was supposed to be guarding from locking him outside certainly was foolish.

At still the same moment, Michael was feeling a bit like he was about to pass out, and rather hoping he wouldn’t.  It didn’t seem the right time for it.  And he really didn’t want to fall.

At the same moment yet again, Jane was also hoping she wasn’t going to fall, only from a rather different sort of climb.  It was just as well she couldn’t find the shoes she had most wanted to wear; those had been pretty but not at all sensible for climbing.

At the same moment, deep in the bank vault, a man who was probably not a security man was telling the man who was not really named Robin that perhaps, there was just the slightest chance, but maybe the vault really was too much for them, short of explosives.

“We need Dawes.”

“We’ll get him,” Robin said complacently.  It said a lot about the respect the others held for him that no one raised an incredulous eyebrow at that statement.

“We’ll have him soon,” Robin concluded.  “And someone better.  Angel is bringing her now.  She’ll be on our side, too, you’ll see.  She’s one of us, if ever there was someone for us.  She’ll understand our cause.  We’ll be in and out in under an hour, just as we planned.”

No one pointed out that the plan had actually been to be in and out in half an hour.  There backup plans had backups.  Even as they waited, the not-security officers laid the explosives.  Just in case.

And at that same moment as all of these events, the leeries arrived at the bank.


	7. Chapter 7

To better understand the current location of all the people in the bank, it would perhaps help to go back slightly to all that occurred just as Angel left the first time, alone, to report to Robin.  At this point in time, all three children were under the bench, some more so than others, Jack was still kneeling in front of it, Mary Poppins sat on the bench at his side and Michael, still miraculously unnoticed, was sitting just outside the fireplace.

The upset of the nanny intruder left several people wondering if they should not be changing their locations.  Michael, for one, knew perfectly well he was in a very precarious position, but could not quite decide what to do about it.  Going back into the chimney felt impossible, his limbs utterly exhausted, his gunshot wound burning.  Moving seemed dangerous.  Annabel and John, meanwhile, felt like the world had flipped in their favor and nothing could harm any of them now, and were wondering if the shouldn’t stop cowering under the bench and climb on top of it.

Jack was still half convinced he dreamed, even as Mary sat down on the bench at his side, then offered him her hand.

“Do come up here, Jack,” she said, and so reasonable was her suggestion that not one of the people holding guns on them thought to suggest all the hostages were meant to be sitting on the ground as she helped him off his knees to take a seat.  Nor did they order silence when Jack answered her.

“Mary Poppins as I live and breathe.”  His voice sounded just as awed and dazed as his expression.  Her response was part fond, part admonishing, and part entirely serious.

“Yes, Jack.  Do keep doing that.”  He blinked at her in response, taking just the slightest bit too long to understand her response.  That was when she frowned, not at Jack but at the men surrounding them with guns, though her eyes did not leave him.  “Some water and a cloth, if you please,” she insisted in her primmest, most disapproving tones.

“Here now,” said Little, not helpfully but as a complaint, “We give the orders.  You’ll be wanting a tea party next!”

“A tea party?” asked Mary Poppins, incredulous, “At this time of morning?  Certainly not.  Be sure the cloth is clean.”

This apparently befuddled Little enough that when Jimmy rushed over with a bowl of water and three handkerchiefs (the other hostages contributed those, luckily, as Jimmy did not have one on him, at least not a clean one), Little did nothing further to protest.

Jack should really have understood more quickly what the water and cloths were for before Mary began to clean the blood off his face, but then, he hadn’t really noticed that he was bleeding.  So it was actually quite startling when the gentle touch awoke a sudden sting.

“We are sorry about this, Mary,” Jimmy said, wringing his hands nervously, like a boy brought before the headmaster.  “We didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

It was probably rather lucky that Jack at that moment really began to notice he hurt, and was startled enough by this information to inadvertently flinch away from Mary’s touch while saying, “Ow!” because Michael was so incredulous at that statement coming from the lips of the man who had shot him that he also inadvertently made a noise from sheer disbelief.

It did not feel like luck to Jack, but then, his ears were still ringing and he had no idea Michael was even in the room.  He was instead rather preoccupied by the discovery that almost being shot actually hurt quite a lot.  More than seemed reasonable considering the bullet itself had missed.

This, in turn, was probably why Annabel decided to crawl out from under the bench.  It was lucky that John was not immediately in position to follow, though he did not think it luck either, being stuck behind Jack’s legs.  Georgie also did not feel it luck to be further stuck behind John.

“Is he alright?” Annabel asked as she came up, her eyes widening at the rather macabre sight of a very red tinted bowl of water, and quite a bit more red soaking into the cloth at Jack’s neck, though the graze at his cheek was mostly cleaned.

“Listen here, miss,” growled Little, not appreciating in the least the way his hostages seemed to be willfully ignoring instructions to stay put and stay quiet.  “Just where do you think you’re off to?”

“You hurt Jack!” she answered back, somewhat less cowed than she probably should have been, but it was harder to be intimidated with Mary Poppins about, and at any rate she was not a naturally meek child.

Things could have become very unfortunate very quickly, particularly as Michael, seeing his child threatened, was gearing up to do something quite brave and extremely stupid.  Oddly enough, what saved them was not magical in any obvious sense.  It was Little himself, by saying his next sentence.

“You two kiddies just better mind yourselves, or you’ll see how I punish naughtiness, and I can tell you it won’t be sitting in a corner.”

“Two?!” answered John, somewhat unwisely out loud, as he managed to slide his way out from behind Jack’s legs.  Then, when all eyes were on him, John stuttered out, “I wasn’t doing anything.”

This in turn caused Little to sneer at him in disgust.  Georgie, quite naturally, went to follow his siblings, only to have both John and Jack pushing back at him with their feet.  Mary Poppins did no such thing.  She sat primly and properly, with her dress’s skirt spread wide, and incidentally hiding the underside of the bench from anyone who might have tried for a better look.

Georgie pushed harder.  John squirmed in response.  The entire bench lurched, and blood stained water spilled across the floor.

“And what are you squirming about for?” Little demanded, marching over with furious intensity.

“I…I…” said John.  The only good thing about the situation was that Georgie, seeing the shoes again, finally stopped moving.

“We need to use the water closet,” said Annabel, in her haughtiest tones.  This probably was not the best tone to take with bank robbers, but then, it was hard not to imitate Mary Poppins when she was so successful using such tones.

“Oh, do you?” said Little.

“I’ll take them,” said Jimmy.  Little gave him a slightly incredulous look, a look that was getting a lot of practice in the past five minutes.  Jimmy just shrugged, and added, “They’re just kids.”

A plan was working.  Whose plan, it is hard to say.  Jack and Michael, for instance, were pleased with the idea of John and Annabel leaving the room full of gun wielding thugs, though Michael was less keen for them to go with the man who had shot him.  Jack, not knowing this detail, and still feeling slightly friendly towards Jimmy, felt the children safer in his hands.  John and Annabel, meanwhile, had not actually planned for their own escape; they had said whatever they had to say to be sure that no one noticed Georgie was there.  If no one knew he was there, he was safer.  And if he later escaped, no one would know to raise the alarm.  Most of the bank robbers felt their plan was going fairly well; the hostages were contained, the bank was locked down, and, random nannies aside, they were in charge.  Jimmy’s plan was slightly different, as seeing first Jack and then Mary Poppins had caused him to question his life choices.  He wanted to please Mary, in fact, and had yet to quite work out whether she was actually against the robbing of banks or merely against robbing banks by pulling guns on those she cared about.  At any rate, it was rather late for Jimmy to change things.  What he failed to note, while having this internal crisis, was that he had seen three children, rather than two, at the beginning of the entire affair.

Georgie had a very different plan from his siblings that centered on one piece of knowledge they were currently ignorant of.  Georgie had a very poor view of the room.  What he mostly saw were feet and the backside of his siblings.  One aspect of the floor he did have a semi-clear view of, from the side of the bench and with his siblings no longer in the way, was the fireplace.

What Mary Poppins might have planned, only Mary Poppins knew.

While Jimmy took the children to the restroom, and subsequently got locked out, Mary Poppins and Jack had a short but very interesting conversation that all the robbers entirely failed to put a stop to.

“It is good to see you, Mary,” Jack said as she returned to her ministrations, attempting to clean away more of the blood.  The cut at his neck was still bleeding, not so much that Jack was likely to pass out or die, but enough to be concerning.

“I would rather not see you like this, Jack,” Mary Poppins answered, some real concern held in her tone.

“It will all come out aright,” Jack answered, trying to grin but offering more of a grimace because her attempts to stop the bleeding were far from comfortable.  She frowned, perhaps at the wound, perhaps at Jack’s words.  Then, slowly, as though tasting each word before she said it, she spoke again.

“Jack…I think I need to tell you something important…about today.”

“…Yes?”

“You know how my cousin has her turtle days?”

“…Yes?”

“That is the way with all my relations.  We all have our…our turtle day.  When everything goes contrary.”

“…Yes?”

“I am practically perfect in every way.”

“…Yes?”

“Today is my turtle day, Jack.”

“…”

“But not to worry.  I am sure we can make our own luck today.  Sweeps are lucky.  Very lucky.  It is amazing how much luck a person can get by _crawling up a chimney_.”

And then she stood up in great alarm while Jack cried “Ow!” quite loudly, and she cried, “Oh!  I need more cloths, more cloths, before he bleeds to death!  Is there no doctor here?!”

“Oh, oh, it hurts!” Jack moaned, clutching dramatically at his neck (and incidentally, being truly startled at the amount of blood that quickly covered his hand; despite the bloody cloths and the pain he still hadn’t fully realized how deep the cut at his neck really was).

The end result was three hostages and two bank robbers offering five handkerchiefs and a scarf to the cause.  Mary Poppins made use of these by pushing the cleanest of the handkerchiefs very firmly into Jack’s neck and then tying it in place with the scarf.  This only half worked, as she could not actually tighten it around his neck without strangling him, but not tightening it did little to hold anything in place.

By the time she figured out a method, there were two less people in the room than before.  No one noticed.  They mostly hadn’t known the two had been in the room in the first place.

Then Angel returned and demanded that Jack and Mary follow her.

Outside the bank, a woman sobbed dramatically, practically draping herself across a policeman’s arms.

“There, there, keep back, keep back,” the policeman confusedly managed to say, alternatively to the woman in his arms and to the crowd of gawkers trying to push in closer to the bank.  Normally, a second officer would be helping out, but he was already somewhat occupied by a young man who kept insisting he had business at the bank and he needed to get through right then, and seemed to not understand in the slightest that this was not possible.

“I have banked at this bank for years!” he shouted, “And I tell you, they won’t refuse my business, let me through!”

Had these officers been less distracted, they might have noted a young woman going determinedly where the officers had been tasked to keep people from going.  If they had been less distracted, they might even have noted that the hysterical woman and the determined young man both had similar bits of paper tucked about their persons, the first sticking out of her handbag and the second from his briefcase, and that these flyers all were headed by the word SPRUCE in large letters.  The officers noted none of this.

Nor did they note the young woman’s climb.  There was not, in fact, much to note.  Within moments of reaching a short wall, she was over its side and out of sight.

The thing to note about the bank was that it was not quite impregnable.  The architect had cleverly thought about entry points like chimneys and windows, and had designed ways around this. Likewise, the sewers would have been a poor choice.  The architect rather thought the job was well done and the bank was quite secure.  But then, the architect had never been a small child who had a father who worked at the bank.  More to the point, the architect had not had a father who had waited until his daughter was half grown before having a change in heart concerning taking his children to work, and in so doing assured that said daughter, in her curious explorations, might note a sort of doorway just her size.

It was around the side of the bank.  The front of the bank was all impressive steps and pillars competing with the cathedral for impressiveness, but such efforts rarely stretch around dark corners.  There, in the half-lit world, was not a world of pillars and marble.  It was the world of coal shuttles and dirty water and soot covered brushes.  The bankers had their doors but banks needed more than bankers; they needed cleaners and guards and sweeps and newsboys and messengers and tea trolleys.  For these purposes there were other doors into and out of the bank.  Of course there was still security.  It was a bank, after all.  But the security needed to guard, say, a break room for tired maids was not quite as extreme as the bolts to the front door.  In fact, the fancy locks at the front were as much to show the public ‘see, we are secure’ as to actually act as security, as much a facade as the marble steps or pillars.  It is the vaults that needed the real heavy duty locks, not the servant’s entrance.

Once there had been a coal chute, a relic from a time when the entire bank more or less ran on coal, and all the lights were gas or oil, and everyone got around by horse and cart.  The chute was gone now.  The space where it used to be remained.

Jane was not as small as she used to be.  Also, and she was quite certain of this, whatever happened next she could not be scolded for dirtying her clothes.  She was not entirely sure whether this fact was a relief or a disappointment.

There was a sort of space at the side of the bank.  At one point, there had been a small wall with a gate and stairs going down to a small door, all of which were generally locked.  There had also been the coal chute, a sort of slide to young Jane’s mind.  Michael had gone down first, because he was still quite young, and a boy, and so he could get away with doing such things with barely a scolding in response.  And Jane, of course, was forced to go after her brother.

They told no one about the broken latch that resulted from their adventure.  Children do not think in terms of possible consequences to actions, like an unsecured latch leading to a robber running off with the bank’s money.  They have the imaginations enough to fit a universe inside, but when it comes to consequences, they think small, and generally only about themselves.  Telling would mean getting into trouble.

The chute was gone, but the small wall and gate were there.  The sort of door where the chute once connected was still there.  It was not a perfect way in.  The stairs did not go to where the chute once entered, they went under it.  The door they led to was shut and locked.  The little door halfway up the wall looked just as barred and locked.  Small children can be very ingenious indeed when attempting to keep themselves out of trouble.

It should not have worked.  Too much time had passed since that adventure.  Someone, at some point, should have noticed.  At any rate, once the chute was shut down for good, the little door should have been boarded over or welded shut.

Jane was not a little girl anymore.  Standing on her toes, she could just about reach the edge of the little door.  It did not move at her first attempt.  But then, it wouldn’t.  There was a trick to it.  One had to push on one corner while pushing down at the top bit (this had once been done using their feet), and it would pop open.

The old chute would have come in very handy right then.  Luckily, Jane did not need it.  She was not a child anymore, and she thought about consequences and she also thought about possible future needs.

She had Jack’s ladder from off his bike.

Climbing it was somewhat trickier than Jack made it seem, but she had on sensible shoes and a determined spirit.  Even as her brother dragged himself up into a dark chimney after his son, his sister clambered through an ancient door, down a dark tunnel, and into the light.


End file.
